#13597
01/03/2001 8:14 AM
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Not so fast with the "fetish" tag, please. My usage of less and fewer was learned from infancy. Okay, for those of you who can't read fast I'll write more slowly.  No, I don't object to 'fewer', and thinks it's a perfectly natural word. I do use it myself, and have been finding more recently that I've been using it where I would formerly have unselfconsciously said 'less', so I've had to examine my thoughts on the matter. It's not a total fetish, you're right, though it can be in some hands.
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#13598
01/03/2001 8:25 AM
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What really concerns me is that what we are seeing now is the institutionalization of usages which creep in out of ignorance and illiterate usage; viz., the indiscriminate confusion of lie/lay, infer/imply, and too many others to list. The result is a decrease in precision and clarity in the language.
Yes, this is my objection too. Although I decry rule-based prescriptivism, I am all for good language against bad language. The loss of useful terms is to be deprecated and if possible opposed. Beg the question is useful in its right sense, and the misuse of it has no value of its own, so I'm vigorous in opposing its misuse.
But case-based, not rule-based. The lie/lay distinction doesn't seem so important, because most verbs don't need separate transitive forms. Misuse can sound quite illiterate, but I would be reluctant to impose my class attitudes if it became really widespread.
Semicolons are the bolts in the tracery of my prose; I feel I haven't been working if I don't have a few to give elegance to the thing.
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#13599
01/03/2001 2:41 PM
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NicholasW expounds: Semicolons are the bolts in the tracery of my prose; I feel I haven't been working if I don't have a few to give elegance to the thing which has nothing to do with this post but is such a beautiful line that I must convey my appreciation to its author.
I'm really responding to the begging the question question. There are many phrases which are misconstrued due to the changing of definitions of key words. A classic example is the exception proves the rule. Presumably we are expected to believe that the more exceptions we have the more the rule is proved. Prove at the time of the coining of that old cliché* had the meaning test. The rule could be proved and found wanting.
*Ha! I thought that would happen; Ænigma "corrected" cliché to [cliche].
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#13600
01/03/2001 3:49 PM
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In reply to:
English has more words...
I thought that the notion that English has more words, by far, than any other language was a generally accepted notion. I've seen it often enough, notably, I believe, in Lincoln Barnett's Treasure of our Tongue. The number of words in the English language is estimated at well above a million, not even counting the arcana of specialized argots and scientific words. To me, what makes English an "advanced language" is the availability of words which have a very precise meaning, which lends clarity and precision when those qualities are wanted, also a large stock of words which can be chosen for beauty of expression. So, although a well-educated person may know 50,000 or more words, he probably does not make use of more than 5,000 max. on a regular basis. The less- and uneducated know and use far fewer, and are more likely to need to resort to grunts and body language to reinforce or interpret what they are saying, which is what you get in other languages with scanty vocabulary.
Your idea that English expresses a wide range of ideas in few words is, IMHO, erroneous. It is true that a sort of Basic English can be taught. During WWII, there were numbers of exiled personnel, including pilots and scholars, from Nazi-occupied countries like Poland, who wanted to offer their services to the Allies, but who spoke no English. The U.S. Army set up a training progrem which included a language school. The language teachers developed and taught this "Basic English" which had a vocablulary of only about 1000 words/expressions (later pared down to about 500), mostly compounds of basic words like come, go, look, give, up, down, so that instead of the students having to learn ascend, arrive, observe, they could use go up, come in, look at, etc.. This worked quite well, and students learned English well enough to function, even if their English often sounded odd and was inelegant. This is the factor which makes English the most popular language in the world: it is relatively easy to learn enough English to communicate. At the same time, English is reckoned to be one of the most difficult languages to master because of the huge number of words and the subtle differences among what seem to be words meaning the same thing; also the huge number of meanings which can never adequately be expressed by a dictionary, but which are in everyday use.
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#13601
01/03/2001 4:20 PM
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Your explanation of "The exception proves the rule" relieves me of a long-felt, nagging tension about that phrase.
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#13602
01/03/2001 5:30 PM
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If Faldage's explanation of the "exception proving the rule" is correct - and I believe it probably is - then it comes strictly from scientific/mathematical/statistical hypothesis testing and therefore can't be all that old.
Does anyone have any reference for when it was first used?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13603
01/03/2001 5:37 PM
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Two posts to the one thread - whoa, the Jazz police will be after me! While I agree with Faldage's facts and figures, he hasn't actually provided an explanation of why English is so easy for foreigners to make themselves understood in with a relatively low level of vocabulary and syntax. The reason is, I think, that incorrect word order will generally sound wrong but, because of our lack of semantically-important word endings, will be understandable. I had to sit through a presentation by a fellow from Myanmar in November whose grasp of English word order was pretty damned tenuous (in fact, I think I learned something about Burmese language word order), yet I understood what he was on about. And that's not the first example of the phenomenon. Are there any other languages (which we know of amongst us) which allow this kind of indiscriminate jumbling up of words without losing the basic meaning?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13604
01/03/2001 6:58 PM
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Cap K asks Does anyone have any reference for when it (prove meaning test) was first used?
The AHD isn't terribly specific here but it does say in its etymology for the word: Middle English proven, from Old French prover, from Latin probare, to test, from probus, good. which would suggest that it had the meaning test. We'll have to look it up in the OED to get the straight skinny and mine is at home.
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#13605
01/03/2001 7:38 PM
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Perhaps I've misunderstood Cap Kiwi's point, but it seems to me that the word order is more important in languages that don't have variable word endings. In Latin, the word order can vary tremendously and the meaning can still be gleaned from the endings on the words, which make clear which word is the subject, which the direct object, etc. To a lesser degree, in Spanish and Italian you can do this, as there are different pronouns for various things, such as direct vs. indirect object.
As an example (dusting off some long-ago-stashed Latin learning) "Puella agricolam amat" is "The girl loves the farmer" and can only be that because puella is the nominative (i.e. subject of the verb), but "Amat puella agricolam" and even "Agricolam amat puella" also mean that she loves him, not the other way around. This kind of mixing in English would completely change the meaning of the sentence, implying that the farmer also loves the girl, which would be begging the question, no?
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#13606
01/03/2001 7:58 PM
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Yes, Hyla, you can get away with it in Latin, although I'm sure that the word order conveyed emphasis and other meaning regardless. Also, it's not commonly used at the meetings I attend ...  Perhaps I overstated the case. Of course an attentive native speaker of most languages can eventually untangle a syntactically garbled sentence. We just seem to be able to do it more easily in English due to a lack of alternative verb formations, in particular. I'm told that in Japanese and Chinese, if you vary the word order from the conventional, the meaning can be completely different. BelMarduk may be able to confirm my impression (gleaned from my long-ago scholastic brushes with the language) that word order is important to meaning in French. FWIW What I think I was trying to get across is the notion that anagrams in English are easier to untangle than in other languages.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13607
01/03/2001 8:08 PM
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I'm still not sure I agree - the alternative verb formations give information that can help to understand the sentence.
As an example in a language a little less dated, in Spanish if you say "Ella te ama" it's clearly "She loves you" and if you botch it up and say "Te ama ella" it can be worked out to mean the same. In English, switching the word order thusly would change it to "You love her." It helps a little that the "Te" is a direct object form rather than a subject form, but even if I botched that up the verb would probably make it clear.
I should point out that even as I write this I can see the sense in your point - it feels like English would handle this better - but the logic of the languages I've studied seems to argue the other way. Maybe I just can't get past the fact that English is my first language and thus will always be the most easily comprehended, even when garbled a bit.
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#13608
01/03/2001 9:44 PM
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I've been basing my viewpoint on direct experience. Mostly South East Asian, admittedly, where there is little in common between the native languages of the locals and English except a smattering of loan-words from English. No matter how badly garbled the word order is, I can generally work out the meaning without any real effort except where the speaker also uses incorrect words.
The other thing is that most of them don't get ALL of the word order wrong. None of them, for instance, would say "Order Different Word in Languages"
Also, I guess, there is an emphasis in most of these countries on learning English, and they do make an effort which you naturally reciprocate.
I enjoy Europe for the fact that you can almost always find someone who speaks enough English to understand you when you have no idea about the local language.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13609
01/03/2001 10:16 PM
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Because of our language issues, two extremely common scenarios are English speakers trying to learn French and French speakers trying to learn English. I know a lot of people on both sides of this equation and know that the English speakers have a much harder time of it than French speakers.
I am told English is easier to learn because you don’t have to worry about attributing every single word properly. “The table is red” in English is easier to learn than the French “La table est brune” because you have to know that a) a table is female and b) the adjective has to be gendered accordingly, so it is not brun but brune.
English speakers say the French use too many words, and that everything has to be attributed and conjugated correctly to be understood.
The word order is important because of all this attribution.
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#13610
01/04/2001 6:23 AM
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.. Prove at the time of the coining of that old cliché had the meaning test. The rule could be proved and found wanting.While, at first sight, this explanation has a seductive quality, I am still unconvinced. First, the corresponding german phrase has the word "bestätigt.." for "proves", and there is no way of interpreting this as "test", it clearly means "confirms". Second, and more important, your hypothesis would mean that any rule which has a single exception is invalid and is to be discarded! this would, in my opinion, deprive the word rule of its specific meaning: "as a rule, I only cross the street when the light is green..." .
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#13611
01/04/2001 9:16 AM
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Wsieber is right. The expression is old, perhaps mediaeval, perhaps ancient, since it occurs in Latin as exceptio probat regulum or exceptio confirmat regulum. Now probat is indeed 'probes, tests', though I don't know (OED please) at what time it took on the modern sense 'proves (conclusively)': did this happen in mediaeval Latin or early modern English?
But confirmat is presumably 'confirms, bestätigt'. There is an alternative explanation for the meaning of the phrase, namely that the need to point out an exception to a rule proves or confirms that a rule exists to make an exception from. The example quoted in Chambers is that No smoking abaft the funnel implies that smoking is allowed before the funnel.
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#13612
01/04/2001 9:26 AM
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CapitalKiwi:
I've been basing my viewpoint on direct experience. Mostly South East Asian, [...]
The other thing is that most of them don't get ALL of the word order wrong. None of them, for instance, would say "Order Different Word in Languages"
I think it's widespread -- I won't say universal because I don't know -- that languages that don't mark case roles tend to have SVO order, e.g. English, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian. Not rigidly, as OVS is also very common in Malay, but in shifting between them you'd quickly work out that SVO was safe and neutral.
There are near-universals of word order, such as that VSO implies noun-adjective (Welsh, Arabic) but SOV implies adjective-noun (Turkish, Japanese), and so also for prepositions versus postpositions, standards of comparison, etc.
SVO, being in the middle, doesn't have such clear matches, e.g. French N-Adj vs English Adj-N.
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#13613
01/04/2001 3:56 PM
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NicholasW wrote: The example quoted in Chambers is that No smoking abaft the funnel implies that smoking is allowed before the funnel.
This seems to get us back to the first post in this thread - wouldn't assuming that one could smoke before the funnel be begging the question?
This example also leaves me puzzled. In this example, there seems to be a proscriptive rule, rather than a rule based on standard practice or theory. In other words, "the rule says no" vs. "as I rule I do this" or even the Laws of Thermodynamics as a rule based on observation of the behavior of things. This is not how I had understood this phrase to be used. I understood it to mean that, based on observation, one might derive a rule for the behavior of something (e.g, every day my cat gets up and scratches at the door frame and I rush to open the door before he does further damage to the wood) or the example of earlier "as a rule, I cross at a green light" and that somehow an exception to this rule would prove it. Because of this understanding I was (briefly) very pleased to hear about the other, older meaning of "prove" as "to test" - it made a nice logical package.
Now I must ask - in this saying, are we talking about a rule that dictates behavior (e.g. No Smoking) or a standard practice ("as a rule") or a theory based on observation?
What's the rule here?
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#13614
01/04/2001 4:36 PM
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NicholasW wrote: The example quoted in Chambers is that No smoking abaft the funnel implies that smoking is allowed before the funnel.
Hyla responded: This seems to get us back to the first post in this thread - wouldn't assuming that one could smoke before the funnel be begging the question?
Certainly in the world of symbolic logic Hyla would be correct but in the real world (if there is such a place) the notion of forbidding some specific action in some specific place would be taken to imply that that action was permitted in other places.
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#13615
01/04/2001 4:41 PM
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CapK asks, anent prove meaning test: Does anyone have any reference for when it was first used?
OED to the rescue. The first citation, involving only form, is from 1175. The first citation in the section covering the definition is from 1200 and uses it in the sense of test.
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#13616
01/04/2001 4:48 PM
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Faldage replies: The first citation, involving only form, is from 1175.... at which time the mathematic proof of the null hypothesis was well known. "As a rule, we Outremerans occupy the Holy Land. This is proven because we still hold Krak des Chevaliers". Which statement would have been true for another 17 years or thereabouts.  Ta, Faldage.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13617
01/05/2001 7:01 AM
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Now I must ask - in this saying, are we talking about a rule that dictates behavior (e.g. No Smoking) or a standard practice ("as a rule") or a theory based on observation?
To the extent that language is ruled by logic, I surmise that the saying is applied to both cases:
If there were no exceptions, nobody would talk about a rule. You don't say: "the rule is for people not to walk through walls."
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#13618
01/05/2001 10:45 AM
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Apropos of proving, I just found the word eprouvette, an apparatus for testing the strength of gunpowder.
I would like one of those in my oubliette.
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#13619
01/05/2001 1:49 PM
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Wseeb says: If there were no exceptions, nobody would talk about a rule. You don't say: "the rule is for people not to walk through walls."
Ah, but surely here's another confusion of the two senses of rule. There certainly is a natural rule that people cannot walk through walls. If there were an exception, our rule would be sorely probed indeed.
On the other hand, a prescriptive rule is one regarding moral. or legal. behaviour. Again, in this case, any exceptions do not prove the rule, but violate it (often, in an ideal world, leading to punitive action against the rule-breaker).
There are, of course. more general rules in science and other studies, that attempt to outline 'natural laws' but which may, indeed, have exceptions. The simple 'law of averages' for instance, would lead you to believe that if you toss a coin a million times it will come up heads or tails in approximately equal proportions. But if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on their way to being dead, it may come up heads only, for as many as a million times in a row. This exception certainly tests, or probes (I like that etymology - thanks Faldage and NickW) the rule, and allows us to be circumspect about its application.
In no circumstances does an exception actually prove (in the modern use of the term) the validity of a natural law.
As to the word 'prove' meaning test - we still have (albeit relatively archaic) terms using that meaning. Proving grounds for armaments are testing centres. And alcohol levels of 'proof' also relate to the alleged practice of 'proving' that a particular liquor contained the requisite levels of alcohol by seeing if it would burn (which it won't at less than about 40% v/v). This is why 40% v/v is 'one hundred degrees' proof - it simply passes the test of being able to be used as a fuel. From there, of course, you can then downgrade the standard and talk about 50 proof - meaning half the alcohol levels that will enable the old proof to be successful. And so on. Of course, in these standardised days, % by volume is more common, and easier to use. But it does raise the interesting point - 250 proof would, presumably, be pure alcohol.
Can anybody confirm or debunk this story of mine (which I seem to recall reading many cycles of the Sun ago) about how HM Customs 'proved' the quality of brandy the French were sending us?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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#13620
01/06/2001 12:43 AM
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geez, I have lost my English tonight. Eprouvette is the French term for one of those little glass vials they use in labs (not beakers). The same thingies they use when they take a blood sample. What is it in English?
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#13621
01/06/2001 3:16 AM
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Test Tubes ("Proof" Tubes)?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13622
01/06/2001 2:51 PM
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In reply to:
I think it's widespread -- I won't say universal because I don't know -- that languages that don't mark case roles tend to have SVO order, e.g. English, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian. Not rigidly, as OVS is also very common in Malay
In Indonesian the relative pronoun (yang = English who/which/that) must be the subject of its verb. If necessary the verb must be made passive. Thus:
Candi bought the shirt = Candi telah membeli baju.
The shirt was bought by Candi = Baju telah dibeli Candi
The shirt which Candi bought = Baju yang telah dibeli Candi .
Thus SVO is preserved. If the agent of a passive verb is a pronoun it comes before the verb, making the sentence SOV
Baju telah saya beli The shirt was bought by me.
I can't think off-hand of an OVS construction.
Bingley
Bingley
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#13623
01/08/2001 7:17 AM
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There certainly is a natural rule that people cannot walk through wallsSince Shanks found it worthy of a closer look, I cannot resist taking it one step further: In my view, a rule is very much a man-made thing. The expression "natural rule" does not sound right to me, contrary to "natural law", which is a different proposition. Strictly, a rule cannot be either proved or disproved, but only confirmed or violated. A rule that has been violated in a few cases may still continue to be accepted, again unlike a natural law. I would like also to mention rules of thumb which are very useful inspite of their exceptions ..
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#13624
01/08/2001 11:18 AM
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I can't think off-hand of an OVS construction.
What is telah? I don't know that word. I presume it's an adverb of simple past, similar to sudah.
What I mean by OVS in Indonesian is in your examples. I would say:
Candi bought the shirt = Candi membeli baju or Baju dibeli Candi.
The mem- marks subject focus and the di- marks object focus. Indonesian has only these two, but in Philippine languages you also get recipient-focus and location-focus with similar distinctions of verb marking.
You could call the di- construction a passive, but it is just as common as the other. In a language that has a passive, the passive is rarer than the active and involves demoting the previous subject to a different case, and the new subject takes on subject marking (such as verb agreement). As Indonesian has no such thing as agreement or cases, I'd prefer to say it has two constructions, SVO and OVS, with the verb marked for actant focus.
This view is undermined by the use of oleh, equaivalent to 'by': Baju dibeli oleh Candi. Since this construction is unlike the usual Austronesian pattern, I suspect it's a recent innovation based on European passives, but I don't know.
I also thought the pronoun prefixing was optional. The way I learnt it, you could say, with the pronouns exactly in parallel with nouns:
Saya membeli baju
or Baju membeli saya
or Baju membeli oleh saya
Or a pronoun-prefixing construction with a form of the older pronoun aku, viz:
Baju kubeli
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#13625
01/08/2001 1:29 PM
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"Who own English? The hoi polloi in the universities– the writers of grammar books? The high and mighty of the OED?"
Am I the only one who flinched at that reference to "hoi polloi"?
Or was it intentional? It does wonderfully illustrate of troy's point: everybody knew what was meant even though the phrase was used in direct contradiction of the dictionary definition.
Although I largely agree with of troy's comments, surely at some point you have to tell Humpty Dumpty that he can't make words mean whatever he wants them to mean. (Or, in the case of this thread, play fast and loose with grammar.) I guess the trouble is we will never all agree on where that line is to be drawn.
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#13626
01/08/2001 3:48 PM
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Dear Ms. Stein,
Welcome to you, and your screen name is wonderful!
No, we can't simply decide on our own that words will mean whatever we want them to, she snargled. I'd say that not only "the trouble", but the interesting part is that we'll never all agree on everything!
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#13627
01/08/2001 3:48 PM
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I, for one, flinched at that usage of hoi polloi, and wondered in what rarified environment the writer must dwell where the hoi polloi are at the universities. Certainly not my town.
Regarding the ownership of the language, I like to believe it is held in common, as in a common trust, and that its speakers have a responsibility to all other speakers of the language--current and potential, present and future--to maintain it in the most rational, educated, and conservative manner possible for each. Linguistic change is inevitable, yet language is larger than the individual, and such change must not be based on caprice, but on the language's own necessary functionality.
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#13628
01/08/2001 4:46 PM
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Of course, if you really want to be pedantic you'll object to the usage the hoi polloi, since hoi means the. This is a common misuse, possibly from the confusion with hoity toity which connotes a certain fussy precision beyond the pale of reason characteristic of some members of Academia (which I prefer to pronounce [a-cuh-DAY-mee-uh] rather than the more commonly accepted [a-cuh-DEE-me-uh] so that I can make reference to Academia Nuts).
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#13630
01/08/2001 9:25 PM
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In reply to:
My my my, sometimes it seems like we talk in circles here, doesn't it?
My my my, Ohioans have long memories around here don't they? Four months must represent at least 13,000 posts - I wish I had that sort of recall! 
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#13631
01/09/2001 3:39 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
Yes, telah is the same as sudah but used in more formal situations. I tend to overuse it, since it's the one I see more often at work.
Yes, if you wanted you could analyse di- and mem- as showing object and subject focus respectively rather than as active and passive verb prefixes; sometimes one analysis is more useful, sometimes the other.
In my experience object-focus sentences are certainly more common than passive verb sentences in English, but they're not as common as subject-focus ones. Of course sentences with di- are not exactly the same as an English passive verb sentence, but in taking isolated examples they work well enough as equivalents.
oleh is obligatory when the agent is separated from the verb, e.g., Candi dibelikan baju oleh kakaknya. (Candi was bought a shirt by his sister), but optional where the agent immediately follows the verb, e.g., Baju dibeli Candi (the shirt was bought by Candi).
Baju membeli saya (The shirt bought me???) I ran this by a native speaker of Indonesian (in fact, the Candi who is becoming so familiar to our readers),who rejected it as not being a sensible utterance.
The most usual way to say what I assume you mean would be: Baju yang saya beli (the shirt (which/that) I bought). First and second person pronouns and pronoun substitutes come immediately before a passive verb (with or without being attached to the verb) and the di- prefix is not used. Third person pronouns can come after the verb, in which case the di- prefix is retained. baju yang dibelinya. (the shirt (which/that)he/she bought).
Bingley
Bingley
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#13632
01/09/2001 7:06 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 31
newbie
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newbie
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 31 |
If the logicians were so logical they should have called it "Assuming the Conclusion" instead of giving it a name that doesn't describe it so well.
Sorry to hark back to such an ancient (my, how fast things move here!) post. I got really excited by Faldage's comment and hoped to find some follow up on the etymology of the expression. It seems untenable to me that the logicians express proprietary rights over it when they haven't proven that they are entitled to ownership. Talk about begging the question!
The real premise that I want to see examined is: what does the phrase mean, or what did it mean when it was first invented. And why that particular construction which, as Faldage points out, apparently defies logic.
BTW apologies if this has been dealt with. I find the threads so labyrinthine and the digressions and tangents so impenetrable (though utterly fascinating) that I'm not sure I will live long enough to check all the posts.
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#13633
01/09/2001 8:12 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
Baju membeli saya (The shirt bought me???) I ran this by a native speaker of Indonesian (in fact, the Candi who is becoming so familiar to our readers),who rejected it as not being a sensible utterance.
Aargh! That was a typo. I meant to transform Saya membeli baju into Baju dibeli (oleh)saya.
But last night I read through my book (it's been many years since I was familiar with this) and discovered what you have also said: 1st and 2nd person subjects precede (not just the fused pronouns, as I had thought).
Another exception to this is with the ter- form, which has to use oleh for the agent.
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#13634
01/09/2001 8:39 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Phyllisstein says: Sorry to hark back to such an ancient (my, how fast things move here!) post. I got really excited by Faldage's comment and hoped to find some follow up on the etymology of the expression. It seems untenable to me that the logicians express proprietary rights over it when they haven't proven that they are entitled to ownership. Talk about begging the question! I wouldn't say that anyone thinks they "own" it. They only define it. A quick google search comes up with umpty-six very similar definitions with very similar examples. As a matter of fact, no one claims ownership of it at all, more's the pity ... The real premise that I want to see examined is: what does the phrase mean, or what did it mean when it was first invented. And why that particular construction which, as Faldage points out, apparently defies logic.The meaning doesn't appear to have shifted (and has been expressed very clearly among the mess of this thread). However, here's a good reference: http://www.drury.edu/faculty/Ess/Logic/Informal/Begging_the_Question.html. But almost any of the others explain it as well. The etymology is obscure - I haven't been able to track down anything reliable, but from the structure of the expression I would expect that it became entrenched in the language during the 17th or 18th centures, although it probably has much earlier origins. Finding explanations for the origins of expressions is not easy. They are just "accepted". Someone else on the board may be able to find something definite. I find the threads so labyrinthine and the digressions and tangents so impenetrable (though utterly fascinating) that I'm not sure I will live long enough to check all the posts.We were all trained in obfuscation and sewing genteel-ish confusion by the Byzantine civil service during the 13th century. We can send you back for some instruction in the art if you like!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#13635
01/09/2001 9:12 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
Another exception to this is with the ter- form, which has to use oleh for the agent.
But only if the agent is a pronoun. It's optional if the agent is a noun and immediately follows the verb, or at least that's what my grammar book says. I'll check with some native speakers and get back to you.
Bingley
Bingley
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#13636
01/09/2001 3:14 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 31
newbie
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newbie
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 31 |
The meaning doesn't appear to have shifted (and has been expressed very clearly among the mess of this thread).Sorry! I expressed myself very sloppily. What I meant was: when you dissect it (word by word) what does the phrase mean? What is the sense of the word "beg" in this case? And is the "question" in question the hypothesis that is supposedly being proven? etc... We were all trained in obfuscation and sewing genteel-ish confusion by the Byzantine civil service during the 13th century. We can send you back for some instruction in the art if you like! "Sewing confusion" sounds very genteel indeed! Thanks for the offer but I don't think fine needlework is really for me. But time travel to Byzantium in the 13th C: now that's a tempting thought!
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