Elements of Style in English
in [Lisp]
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From: Raffael Cavallaro on 14 May 2010 21:27 On 2010-05-14 21:14:44 -0400, Stan Brown said: > 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. Benjamin Lee Whorf, of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis fame, once opined that Hopi had no words that refer to what we know as time. This, as you suspected, is false. It seems Whorf was possibly a bit more interested in making a revolutionary anthropological argument than he was in actually speaking conversational Hopi or he would have known that the language has terms for such temporal commonplaces as "yesterday" and "later," among others. In addition, Hopi has the (near as I've been able to determine) universal distinction between nouns and verbs. warmest regards, Ralph -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: Peter Moylan on 14 May 2010 22:56 Stan Brown wrote: > 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"? > In meaning, it's the same as the "y" in the French sentence: at that place [1]. Grammatically, though, it's a little different, because "y" is a dative pronoun while "there" is an adverb. Translate back into French again, and you get "Voil� une maison". I don't know what part of speech "voil�" is considered to be these days, but historically it must have been an imperative. ("See there".) All of which seems to mean that these existential expressions can occupy any grammatical niche, depending on which language you choose and which exact wording. [1] That is, in the phrase "il y a", the "il" is a dummy subject, but the "y" is not a dummy; so the informal form "Y'a une maison" is actually more logical. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: Jerry Friedman on 14 May 2010 23:27 On May 14, 8:53 am, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-05-14 10:06:12 -0400, Jerry Friedman said: > > > I don't think we see the subject as the /author/ of an action. When > > we say "the rain falls" or "the wind blows", I don't see that we're > > imputing any free will to the rain or the wind or anything else, or > > implying a single causal agent, even though those sentences have > > subjects. > > My point was not about these types of degenerate sentences considered > separately. My point was that the pervasive agency seen in human > languages - the near universal grammatical division of the world into > agents, actions, and the objects of those actions - flows from the > cognitive illusion of our own agency or subjecthood. Or more precisely, from the whole universe, since it's an illusion that the cognitive illusion of our own agency is distinct from anything else? > Our languages have a grammatical notion of "subject" "verb" and > "object" because of the perceptual illusion of free will, the illusion > of our own agency. How would we say "The snow covered the rock" if we didn't have that illusion? (Assuming it's an illusion. I do not choose to, or I cannot, argue with you about free will.) And is there any support for your claim about language? > Once this became the linguistic norm, it is only > logical that expressions would arise that appear to follow this norm > grammatically (e.g., "it is raining") but obviously don't conform to > this grammatical norm semantically (i.e., there is no "it" that "does" > the raining when it rains). > > Because the grammatical norm is based on a perceptual falsehood, it is, > in fact the exeptions to the grammatical norm that are more > scientifically accurate. Everything that you think you choose to do, in > fact merely happens, without your illusory agency, much as it just > rains without there being a "rainer."[1] > > warmest regards, > > Ralph > > [1] for those reading on c.l.l., I'm not talking about Rainer Joswig here! ;^) Or the illusion of him. -- Jerry Friedman
From: Peter Duncanson (BrE) on 15 May 2010 05:24 On Fri, 14 May 2010 21:08:42 -0400, Stan Brown <the_stan_brown(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: >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. Me neither. With sentences such as "It is raining" and "It is sunny" it is possible to describe them as ways of saying "Rain is falling" and "The sun is shining" or something similar. How about "It is dry" and "It is dark"? They describe a condition in the same way as the other sentences. Sun and rain can be thought of as "substances", physical entities, which come from somewhere. "Dry" and "dark are not "substances". -- Peter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english)
From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 15 May 2010 06:09
"Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <mail(a)peterduncanson.net> writes: > On Fri, 14 May 2010 21:08:42 -0400, Stan Brown > <the_stan_brown(a)fastmail.fm> wrote: > >>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. > > Me neither. > > With sentences such as "It is raining" and "It is sunny" it is possible > to describe them as ways of saying "Rain is falling" and "The sun is > shining" or something similar. How about "It is dry" and "It is dark"? > They describe a condition in the same way as the other sentences. Sun > and rain can be thought of as "substances", physical entities, which > come from somewhere. "Dry" and "dark are not "substances". Ask yourself who or what is dry or dark. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ |