Elements of Style in English
in [Lisp]
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From: Stan Brown on 14 May 2010 21:05 Thu, 13 May 2010 20:38:05 +0000 (UTC) from Christian Weisgerber <naddy(a)mips.inka.de>: > Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > > [quoted text muted] > > > > "It's raining" into a few other languages. > > > > "It's raining" in Spanish is "Llueve" (literally "Rains") or "Esta > > lloviendo" (literally "Is raining"). > > In French, where personal-pronoun subjects are NOT optional, this > is "il pleut", with a dummy subject, just like English "it rains" > or German "es regnet". And in French we have "il y a une maison", again with the dummy subject "il". But the corresponding English is "there's a house". What is the grammatical function of "there"? -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai...
From: Stan Brown on 14 May 2010 21:08 Fri, 14 May 2010 04:00:21 +0200 from Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb(a)informatimago.com>: > That is, ontologically, is it possible to have an action without a subject? A good question. "Il pleut" and "it's raining" *look* like subject- verb, but they're not really. More accurate would be "La pluie see tombe"(*) or "Rain is occurring". (*) I'm sure there's a better way to say that. But I know very little of modern grammar. -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai...
From: Stan Brown on 14 May 2010 21:10 Fri, 14 May 2010 09:23:47 -0700 (PDT) from Vend <vend82(a)virgilio.it>: > But in the phrase "it is raining", which could be considered an > abbreviation of "it is raining water", "water" is the object of the > verb, not the subject. In fact, the phrase doesn't really have a > subject, "it" is merely a syntatic placeholder. I've always thought that, and a moment ago posted something to that effect. But maybe "it" really is a pronoun, whose antecedent is "the current condition" or "the weather". "What's the weather?" "It's raining." -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai...
From: Stan Brown on 14 May 2010 21:12 Fri, 14 May 2010 11:18:41 -0400 from Bob Felts <wrf3 @stablecross.com>: > There's actually a recent article which claims to show experimental > support for the future influencing the past, but I can't find it at the > moment. I'll ping the friend who originally sent it to me. Won't you have to wait till he sends it? :-) -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai...
From: Stan Brown on 14 May 2010 21:14
Fri, 14 May 2010 08:25:58 -0400 from Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>: > On 2010-05-14 05:37:22 -0400, Pascal J. Bourguignon said: > > > Not an underlying language, but an underlying model, in the sense of > > formal semantics. > > This part seems to be true - i.e., all human languages, as near as I've > been able to determine, makes some sort of separation between what in > english we would call nouns and verbs - there seems to be an underlying > human cognitive model that there is a class of more temporally stable > things (nouns) and a class of more temporally transient things (verbs). It's a common statement that Hopi doesn't make such a distinction. I don't know whether that's actually true, because it's also a commonplace that Eskimo(*) has hundreds of words for "snow", and that's false. (*) Is there even an "Eskimo" language? I suspect the Inuit have multiple regional languages. -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com Shikata ga nai... |