“Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of tone of voice.”
I’m not trying to debate the merits of this sentence from an early 20th century philosopher. I just want to know what people think it means.
I think it means that well-chosen words and phrases can accurately convey ideas without relying on vocal inflection to convey meaning or tone.
The more precise we are, the more accurately we can convey what we want in a text medium.
Clear writing can express thoughts accurately without relying on intonation.
Pretty hard to tell. Can you upload a recording?
Hah.
Language without structure is grunting.
(Without reading the thread)
The beauty of grammar and logic is that one can communicate meaning without resorting to secondary sources of information, such as tone of voice, facial expression and hand gestures.
“Free” in the sentence is a verb, not an adjective (I first read it as “grammar and logic-free language”!).
It sounds like a description I once read of Chinese.
This…for certain.
This.
Language can be freed from misunderstanding by the tone of the voice with grammar and logic.
The ability to respond strictly to denotation plus syntax contributes to an ability to ignore connotative effects.
(;). C’mon, I had to…)
Damn, I was hoping to hear an uncontaminated proposal from you in particular, though I knew you keep up with Language Log so thought it might be impossible.
To others in the thread: Indistinguishable is referencing my own answer to the question, which I gave at a discussion on a different website. I was surprised that others there thought it meant something different, and was curious to see what people here would make of it. It looks like the responses here are just as varied–perhaps more so–than they were over there.
Thanks for the responses, more are welcome of course!
And I still think I’m right, but I no longer think I’m obviously right. 
ETA: @Indistinguishable, Hey, umm, are you posting in the comments to that entry?
Nah, just reading them. Though, actually, the order of events was that I read this thread before seeing the relevant bit on Language Log. My first interpretation, based on the sentence alone, was something about the constraints of syntactic structure providing enough redundancy to obviate ambiguity even in written text or other media lacking the information provided by vocal tone, but after seeing further context, I no longer find that a tenable interpretation.
I didn’t read anyone else’s posts yet.
Grammar rules allow us to impart our words with a wider variety of meanings than we can achieve with tone of voice alone.
ETA: Looks like only ITD read it the same way as me.
Well, I am now, but not really as part of the main thread of discussion…
I’ve always felt this way about emoticons. If you need an emoticon to express what you are trying to say, you need to learn to write more precisely with, you know, words and stuff.
To me, the quote means this:
The ability of a language to structure itself to a known (or implied) standard (or sets of standards) has orders of magnitude more expression, utility, and beauty than one restricted by the mere inflection of ones voice.
The meaning would have been more apparent by placing “the” between “free” and “language.” It’s tempting for a writer to carve away too much, in pursuit of simplicity.