I think your probably right re: syntax versus semantics. Though perl does have a lot of syntax compared to other languages. And without that large syntax, I don't think it would be possible to have the powerful semantics without hiving much of the native power off into a RTL/Class library as other languages have done.

I also reached the conclusion that it the rise in complexity of the syntax (p6 -v- p5), as perceived by the OP and many others, is required to allow the further enhancement of the semantics.

The devil is undoubtably in the detail. Balancing the Huffman principle; with the (natural) calls for orthoganality; with the desire for greater OO-ness; with the extension of the Lisp-ishness; with an overarching desire (and need) to maintain the perlish usability, is a knife-edge balacing trick that reminds me of an old joke about flies sliding down razor-blades, using their ...er...anatomy... as brakes.

I've recently been forced into re-aquainting myself with C++ (complete with MS' overdefined types and class libraries, hungarian notation and 5 lines per statement example code!), and it is painful. I was never much enamoured with C++ from either the syntactic or semantic level. It took the very simple, elegant syntax of C and 'stuck on' a lot of complicated syntax that barely worked. It also tried to apply braces and a plaster cast to the simplistic C semantics (roll your own:), and resulted in a complexity that made it like using three languages all at the same time--(almost untyped) C, strongly-ish typed, multiple-inheretance OO, and templates. The result is a very powerful, but hugely difficult language to do well.

Like natural languages, perl needs to evolve. I'm not a latin scholar, but I hear testimony from many that are, that latin is a very elegantly structured language. Which begs the question, why did it die? My conclusion (which has no more authority than that of a casual observer) is that it died because the civilisation that evolved and regulated it died, and it therefore failed to evolve further.

If perl stayed static and didn't evolve, it too would die. Sure, there would be some hard core enthusiasts that would keep it from dying out completely just as there are with many ancient natural languages, but newer languages would simple overwealm it.

From my perspective, the only hard part is not being able to use it now, but in nature the only things that have short gestation periods also have short frenetic, lives, so I watch and wait with (tempered) eager antisipation.