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TEd:

Thanks.


#147908 09/15/05 02:44 PM
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Ah, so because it is intransitive, it needs the addition of "FROM" in the sentence because it cannot have a direct object. Or you'd actually be saying that you measured the high-school in some sort of way.

Am I understanding correctly?


P.S. Thanks for your patience. I admit to being well below Board knowledge when it comes to grammar.


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...is this Information or an Announcement?

1. It is information because it informed you that I did a bad thing last Tuesday.

2. It is an announcement because it announced to all the world that I am arrogant, supercilious, rabid, legless, foolish, superioristic, repulsive, illogical, churlish and mean spirited ... according to Max.

Why not post this in Miscellany?

1. I never post anything to Miscellany because I do not read Miscellany .. in an effort not to be consumed entirely by this Board. The little counter on my AWAD home page tells me that I have 30,199 unread posts under the Miscellany tab. Maybe more by the time you read this.

2. I won't engage in an argument about which category ought be the proper place for anything I post. Like G.K. Chesterton, "I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."

(go ahead and subpoena me, Fr Steve, in PM -- hey, btw, whence sub-poena?!)

Back in the good old days, when courts were allowed to inflict cruel and unusual punishment willy nilly, a subpoena concluded with the legend: "HEREIN FAIL NOT AT YOUR PERIL." The recipient was left to imagine what might happen to one who ignored such an order from a court. Whatever that consequence might be, it was sure to be painful, hence the name "sub poena" meaning "under pain."


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> because I do not read Miscellany

but look what you're missing!

Subject

bumper stickers
That's vocabulary sorted, now for grammar
Coonhunters for Christ
Wilfully created ghost word
Abbreviations that don't work
Importhography
levee
copoclephilist
what word is that?
Giggles at work
Clothes Press
greyed out
Left in the lurch
Psychedelic
"on the ground"


how many other selective readers do we have? jes' wonderin'...



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In reply to:

2. It is an announcement because it announced to all the world that I am arrogant, supercilious, rabid, legless, foolish, superioristic, repulsive, illogical, churlish and mean spirited ... according to Max.



Tsk, tsk, such imprecision from a prescriptivist - most unbecoming. I never said that you were such, I said that prescriptivism in general, and your actions in writing that note, demonstrated those characteristics. There is a difference between saying that someone's actions on a specific occasion demonstrated arrogance and saying that said person IS arrogant, na? In fact, the only comment I made about you personally was that you were a nice person (you can choose which nice).

Even descriptivists can use language to make fine distinctions, y'know.


#147912 09/15/05 09:46 PM
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We both graduated from high school in 1996.

Or either you could say that the "from" was elided. Works for lots of things.


#147913 09/16/05 12:04 AM
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I once got dinged by a section leader in a chemistry class for referring to "pouring 50 ml of (something-or-other) from a graduate." His comment was "You poured from a graduated cylnder. I am a graduate!"
Here is a picture of a graduated cylinder, a device for measuring precise amounts of liquids: http://makeashorterlink.com/?E52921ECB

At the risk of belaboring the obvious - you didn't graduate from school, you were graduated from the school, making you a graduate of that school.

(But that may be fighting a lost battle, like trying to insist that "loan" is a noun...Can't you imagine? Mark Antony addressing the Roman populace: "...countrymen - LOAN ME YOUR EARS!")


#147914 09/16/05 12:06 AM
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>Or either you could say that the "from" was elided. Works for lots of things.

Well, no, Fong, I could not say that. Why? Because it is my sincere belief that the person who would say "I graduated high school" would be totally befuddled if one suggested to him that there was an elision in his sentence.




TEd
#147915 09/16/05 12:49 AM
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I'm not sure if the term is used elsewhere, but people of dubious sanity are sometimes called nut jobs here. Reading this thread, and the bleatings of the prescriptivists, I've come to the conclusion that, although sane, the appropriate epithet for them all is as above. Every devout prescriptivist is a Knut job, except with less chance of success than he had.


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how many other selective readers do we have? I read only:
Information and announcements
Q&A about words
Wordplay and fun
Miscellany, and
Weekly Themes.

If there happens to be a new post in Looking for (writers, speakers, ...), I'll take a gander, but that's it. I spend too much time at the computer. So if anybody wants to call me bad names, do so "below the fold" and I won't see them!


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