It also reminds me of the idea that some things cannot be translated adequately, because there are ideas which can only be understood in the original language. The Koran is apparently an example of this, if not the chief one. --Ed Poor
I reread the article to see if it had changed recently, but it's pretty stable and pretty much as I remember it, which is quite good (if I must say so, having originated most of it). I simply don't see the anti-SW bias you do: it does--correctly--report that the hypothesis is generally discredited by modern linguists, mostly due to Chomsky's influence. That's simply a fact about modern linguistics. If anything, I think the article goes out of its way to be fair to pro-SW arguments by pointing out that weaker version have been demonstrated.
Which examples, specifically, do you think are bad and how could they be improved? Don't just tell me their bad--point me to better ones. If it's the pro-SW examples, then you'll have to settle for them, because there aren't any better ones--that's one reason why it's generally discredited. The anti-SW example is the simplest one to explain and lets the user use his personal experience to understand the idea; I think it's very good. In short, I don't find your criticism here specific enough to make any actual change. --LDC
In the area of Biblical Studies, the idea that ideas expressed in the Bible could be derived from study of the mechanics of the languages used (Greek and Hebrew) was (and is) influential, but was dismantled by James Barr (Semantics of Biblical Language, 1961; Biblical Words for Time, 1969). A less technical argument is that, for example, Platonists, anti-Platonists, Gnostics, and who know what else, could all explain themselves in Greek. So Greek doesn't tell you much about them.
(I didn't do this paragraph, but I didn't object to it so much that I wanted to delete it. Perhaps if its author can better explain its relevance... --LDC
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