On 10/03/2008 07:50 AM, Jim Allan wrote: > Harold Fuchs wrote: > >> >> You and your teacher are absolutely correct. The purpose of language is >> *correctly* to transfer the thoughts of one to another. That is >> precisely why grammar is important. The phrase "The President said >> Monday ..." implies that the word "Monday" is included in what the >> President said. Therefore it does not *correctly* transfer the thought. > > The president said, “Monday ....”. > “The president,” said Monday .... [Monday is here the name for a person.] > The president said Monday .... > The president said on Monday .... > The president said on the economy .... > The president said on the dais at the Lincoln Center ... > The president spoke Monday .... [A very unambiguous utterance.] > The president spoke on Monday .... [This could mean that the president > spoke on the subject of Monday.] > The president spoke on the economy .... > > Grammar alone often does not correctly transfer the thought to the point > where a hearer *cannot* interpret the utterance very differently than > intended. Yet the utterance may be fully understood without difficulty > by 99.9999% of those who hear the utterance. “President saided Monday ....” > >> The same is true of "Biden will debate Palin". No he won't. He'll debate >> [the issues] *with* Palin. If he debated Palin he'd be discussing her >> existence. Again, the thought is not correctly transferred. To get the >> thought correctly transferred you need the right grammar. > > Biden will debate with Palin. [I believe “Biden will debate against > Palin” would be less likely to be misinterpreted.] > > And someone may quite easily debate the subject of Shakespeare or the > subject of Palin without ever discussing whether they actually existed > or not. > > See http://www.bartleby.com/61/19/D0061900.html . “Debate” is both a > transitive and intransitive verb. That is one of the reason why > apparently contradictory meanings may be extracted from grammatically > correct utterances. > > “Again, the thought is not correctly transferred.” > > You may believe that the thought *should* not be correctly transferred. > But what if it *is* correctly transferred to anyone who knows who Biden > and Palin are? Context *is* important. > > That is why modern grammarians generally eschew artificial examples. > Instead they search through texts to find what grammar is being used and > understood and why they tape dialogues between subjects to attempt to > see what forms are being used and understood. > > Jim Allan
[purposely not snipped] And that is why it is so difficult to write and implement a grammar extension/plugin/add-on. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
