Has anyone ever defined E-prime in E-prime? The wikipedia page doesn't offer one but I'd imagine it would have to be a series of prolog-like assertions about E-prime. You obviously can't just say "E-prime is ..."
Shuzan held out his short staff and said, "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"
Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" explains this well in chapter 9 (Mumon and Gödel). I believe the argument goes that by calling it a specific thing you "oppose the reality" of all the other things it also is - no single name will ever suffice. Closed world assumption and all that.
E-prime removes all conjugations of "to be" from English. <-- Not sure if quoting "to be" as a noun counts. :)