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Breaking away from the sports example above: Can periphrastic sentences be considered beautiful in a wild untended sort of manner?
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>ramfeezle got picked up by my spellcheck, but not farshimalt.
my spellcheck (and that used here at AWAD) chokes on 'spellcheck'. heh
formerly known as etaoin...
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Breaking away from the sports example above: Can periphrastic sentences be considered beautiful in a wild untended sort of manner? I think they're quite beautiful. By sacrificing the simplicity of the basic verb constructions (which simplicity has a beauty of its own, related to its economy,) periphrasis adds convolutions, which - when used judiciously - are able to 1) add complexity and texture for those who appreciate such things, and 2) express subtleties of thought and expression that may be lost with simpler constructions. As a fluent speaker of English, I still have to pause occasionally when assembling a periphrastic phrase in the course of speaking. The innumerable options periphrasis affords (as evinced by this thread) enrich and beautify our language, in my opinion.
"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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the forms 'more beautiful' and 'most beautiful' are (at a minimum) periphrastic. : )
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We'll have to use them once in a while :-)
Last edited by beck123; 03/15/10 03:44 AM.
"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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I think they're quite beautiful. By sacrificing the simplicity of the basic verb constructions (which simplicity has a beauty of its own, related to its economy,) periphrasis adds convolutions, which - when used judiciously - are able to 1) add complexity and texture for those who appreciate such things, and 2) express subtleties of thought and expression that may be lost with simpler constructions.
I could not have put this better, but I am looking for help to answer a simple question should I use a longer sentence if I want to do away with the severity that brevity imposes at the cost of everything beautiful that brevity has to offer? Also will it be correct to generalise that brevity is of the intellect and wordiness is of the senses? Would that mean haiku works a dyptich of brevity and sensuousness? (3 questions. The first is most important for me. Thanks for your thoughts on this.)
Last edited by Avy; 03/15/10 03:55 AM.
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English got rid of its cases and so did all the Romance languages, but the Slavic languages held on tight to theirs. I guess it depends on your definition of 'case'. Equating 'case' with the grammatical markers used to indicate case makes for some strange combinations. In Latin, for example, in first declension genitive and dative singular are the same case and in second declension dative and ablative singular are the same case. I would prefer to think of case as the actual relation a noun has with other elements in a sentence.
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it depends on your definition of 'case'. Equating 'case' with the grammatical markers used to indicate case makes for some strange combinations.
Most linguists these days go for a bit of both: overt grammatical markings (the surface morphology of case) and the function (the syntax of words and the function of case.
In Latin, for example, in first declension genitive and dative singular are the same case and in second declension dative and ablative singular are the same case.
That's not how the Romans or today's grammarians would have analysed it. They distinguished case from case-endings (or other kinds of overt markers). Even the Indian grammarians of Sanskrit, who came from an entirely different tradition, separated case-endings from case. They also divided the cases into a myriad of functions, e.g., the genitive of possession and the partitive genitive. While the names given to cases are essentially arbitrary--in fact, the Sanskrit grammarians just numbered their cases, first through seventh--they are convenient tags to discuss the various phenomena of case.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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>use them both
irregular periphrastic adjectives, non-beautiful subdivision
more furshlugginer .. most furshlugginer
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It isn't fursluggishness but I'm still trying to get behind periphrastic and following the indications of the American Heritage I went from periphrastic via periphrasis to cir·cum·lo·cu·tion The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language. Evasion in speech or writing. A roundabout expression. (and now I vaguely have an impression of where this case leaded to) 
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