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enthusiast
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OP
enthusiast
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cheers bingley,
and nicely explained too.
william
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old hand
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old hand
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>how many tenses are there in the english language? pretense is also frequently encountered 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>how many tenses are there in the english language?
pretense is also frequently encountered
Oh, this is getting intense!
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addict
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addict
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I'm currently absorbed by "Conversations about the end of time" [with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau. Fromm, NY, 2000]. In answer to the question "Are we witnessing the end of time?", Carriere [amongst other things, Bunuel's scriptwriter] responds:
"The first thing that occurs to me, and which is indisputable, is that we are seeing the end of a number of grammatical tenses. Where has the future anterior gone? What's happened to the past historic? The imperfect subjunctive is only very rarely used nowadays … What are grammatical tenses if not the painstaking attempt of our precise, meticulous minds to envisage all the possible shapes that time can take, all the ways in which we relate to time within the domain of our thoughts and actions? … We shall never be able to carve up time into a sufficient number of tenses to control it and be able to say, at each instant within its fleeting forward movement: That's the time it is."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Very true, paulb, very true! A great many people have
extreme difficulty accecpting the fact that there are things in their lives that they cannot control.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Sep 2000
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I have a question; probably should be posted on a grammar board, but hope I will get an answer.
What truly makes an adjective? As example, the word "oust" is defined as a verb; however, the word can be used as an adjective (participle): "The ousted politician ..."
My question: Is a true adjective a word that cannot be used as a verb? A "red" apple; a "blue" sky. Are true adjectives words that cannot be used as verbs?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"ousted" is merely an inflected form of the verb oust; that doesn't make it any less "real" -- maybe the word you want is "pure" to suggest an adjective which has no inflected forms.
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>"ousted" is merely an inflected form of the verb oust<
I recall things in Latin called gerunds and gerundives, which were verbal adjectives and verbal nouns. Unfortunately I can't remember which were which, but 'ousted' is a verbal adjective.
The examples which got me confused were the 'ing' words:
I am walking in the park. verb.
I like walking in the park. noun
The walking man is in the park. adjective.
...
And tsuwm, whilst I understand what you are getting at with 'pure' adjectives, I think we have discussed in many threads how poor little virgin adjectives (and other parts of speech!) become sullied and corrupted with the passage of time.
The valet blacked his master's shoes.
The novelist carefully whited out the mistakes in her manuscript.
...are these adjectival verbs????? ...Help!...
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addict
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May I follow up my earlier post quoting Carriere in 'Conversations about the end of time'? A little later on he quotes an Indian friend, Moshe Agashi, about 'time':
"When you look at a watch dial for the time, that time is situated within the circle of time. You immediately recall what you have done in the course of the day, where you were this morning, what time it was when you bumped into your friend, you remember when dusk is going to fall, and you see the time that's left before bedtime, when you'll go to bed sure in the knowledge of another day well spent, and with the certainty also that on the following day time will resume its daily course around your watch. If all you've got is a little rectangle, you have to live life as a series of moments, and you lose all true measure of time."
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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. If all you've got is a little rectangle, you have to live life as a series of moments
Was he referring to television?
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