Are there universal semantic principles that languages share, when controlled / normalized for syntax?
Colorless green ideas may not sleep furiously / violently.
But, can sentences like the following may even be defined, let alone tested?
- Similarly to how scripts tend to become more easier-on-the-hand over time, and pronunciations tend to become easier-on-the-tongue over time, languages become easier-on-the-mind over time.
- Different vocations or fields of study have their own language. These may or may not be subsets of natural languages. An average person from one vocation or a field of study can learn another field’s language so that states of affairs can be reliably communicated to someone from that (the other) field, just like a Zulu can learn Chinese and talk about their thoughts and feelings to a Chinese person. These vocation-languages can have their distinct syntax, grammars, semantics & pragmatics which could be more or less complex than the grammar of the native natural languages of any person in that vocation.
typically not a natural language
Easier-on-the-mind as in what, exactly?
A possible proxy indicator would be reduction in size of various grammatical tables
What are vocation languages?
If you’ve been in a situation where you thought “the words that I am saying aren’t expressing what I want to say, even though I think I’m using them as per their usually construed meaning”, you might be struggling with one or many vocationalese. People working in different and similar fields have figured out their conventions and you’re expected to catch up. Also, for the same given word or phrase, people from different fields are going to have different ‘field-level-default’ interpretations. They are also going to have different ‘field-level-default’ expectations of explanation.
In case of natural languages, you can show a fruit to someone who doesn’t understand your language, call out its name in your language and use that name whenever it comes up in conversation.
- A company saying they’re making the world a better place.
Legalese, bureaucratese are quite popular.
Mathematicians find it cute how physicists and economists use advanced mathematical theories and apply it with ad-hoc approximations.
Ideas like ‘hidden curriculum’
Managementese
- shared internal logic across people in supervisory roles,
Propagandese
- Requirement of brevity, catchphrases, acronyms is one way.
- Using passive when trying to avoid accountability