Periods Meeting Quotes

@spendius,

Quote:

Now is not the time to ask you a question I have in mind so I will forbear doing so.

The answer is ineffable. Although JTT's bit of:

Quote:

How's your mom and dad?

sounds promising provided I arrange the shebang.

My concern was that you and your esteemed partner's contributions not be stymied through egregious error before the other didacticism could be trammelled.

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

I'm just curious as to whether you've changed your stance on that grammatical point of contention ( whether or not it's okay to begin a sentence with a conjunction).

Many people regard the King James Bible as a wonderful piece of writing, and it's chock full of them.

Quote:

The Creation of Light
Genesis 1

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

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@izzythepush,

As I said before, not only do I not mind them, I actively appreciate and enjoy that particular construct.

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@izzythepush,

Funny you should mention King James today - I just finished Christopher Hibbert's biography of Elizabeth 1 - The Virgin Queen- which ended with her deathbed agreement to have James crowned as king and a paragraph about how relieved everyone was to finally have a male who had two male heirs waiting in the wings take the throne.
What a piece of work that old girl was! I'm not being facetious or totally derogatory- I know she had a tough row to hoe - but lordy, I'd have hated to have gotten on 'er bad side!

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@aidan,

I like starting sentences with 'And,' if you do it right there's a sense of satisfaction. Have you checked out that Shakespeare biography yet? There's a lot on Liz there.

Speaking of which, have you been watching The Hollow Crown? I missed Richard II, but Henry IV pt 1 was really good, and I've got part2 on tape. The guy playing Falstaff is brilliant.

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@aidan,

Quote:

I'd have hated to have gotten on 'er bad side!

So would I. She is said to have convened the Privy Council to see if a more satisfying method of execution could be found than hanging, drawing and quartering.

BTW--Fowler has over 3 pages on subjunctives. Is it possible to have an explanation of how the word is being used on here. The entry is completed by--

Quote:

The conclusion is that writers who deal in Survival subjunctives run the risk, first, of making their matter needlessly formal, second, of being tempted into blunders themselves, third, of injuring the language by encouraging others more ignorant than themselves to blunder habitually, and lastly, of having the proper dignity of style at which they aim mistaken by captious readers for pretentiousness.

Those who are unaware that such risks are being run are completely ******* ignorant.

There is (are) about 1.45 (using a ruler) pages on "is". The sub-headings are--

I. Is and are between variant numbers.
2, Is and are in multiplication tables.
3. Is auxiliary and copulative.
4. Is after compound subject.
5. Is, or has, nothing to do with.

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@Miss L Toad,

Quote:

My concern was that you and your esteemed partner's contributions not be stymied through egregious error before the other didacticism could be trammelled.

Yes- it is rather trying I must admit.

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@JTT,

If that is the fate of the QES try imagining the NCSE straightening out the educational system when there is no Church left for them to **** on and they are empowered to sense their respectability in any of the pantsdown variations known to the historical record.

When they engage desuetude in confusion and disarray that will be the remainder. And, to coin a phrase, that, I think, is the aim.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

Speaking of which, have you been watching The Hollow Crown? I missed Richard II, but Henry IV pt 1 was really good, and I've got part2 on tape. The guy playing Falstaff is brilliant.

I have dipped into the recent spate of such things and I have been unable to prevent myself from repressing the absurdity and ridiculousness of the stagey posturings.

Coronation Street is where modern acting and scriptwriting is (are) now. Coronation Street is only absurd and ridiculous, compared with the Tour de France, say, if the audience accepts that it's (their) ways of life are (is) absurd and ridiculous. Which it is (are) fain not to do.

I have, more than once, sat giggling like Dudley Moore in Arthur, but for real, watching Corrie in the company of ladies compassionately empathising with the plight of the characters in a particularly attenuated tragic complexity.

Shakespeare is all very well so long as the audience can imagine that it has nothing to do with people of their station. Which is a coy indulgence of course.

I prefer reading Shakespeare. Although, having seen one short clip of Polanski's Macbeth, I think I might enjoy it.

But the BBC Two thespians are just hilarious.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

I imagine that the gene pool will be better off
if the idiots stop *******.

JTT wrote:

That's certainly true in your case, Om.

We r all very aware of your universal hostility, J. Good luck with that.

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Are you under the impression that I think anyone here is an idiot? And if you are, why are you?

In your expert opinion Frank, is YOUR second sentence here a fragment?
I mean I feel like something of a petty little idiot for pointing it out - but I'm just curious as to whether you've changed your stance on that grammatical point of contention ( whether or not it's okay to begin a sentence with a conjunction).

One might expect that if u r going to use a conjunction,
u 'll use it to CONJOIN things.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Shakespeare is all very well so long as the audience can imagine that it has nothing to do with people of their station. Which is a coy indulgence of course.

I think you're completely wrong in this respect. What is important about Shakespeare is that what he said is still relevant today.

The plays are meant to be seen, not read in isolation.

Are you a fan of Polanski or Bodie and Doyle?

One of the few upsides of being widowed, is I no longer have to watch Corrie, or Big Brother.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Going back to the Queen's English Society it struck me that the reason for their decline is the failure to attract the right sort of persons.

Wilhelm Reich explained that an organisation, to get airborne, needs to recruit some hotties in short skirts and make it worth their while to be enthusiastic members, (Sorry about that but it was unavoidable). Word soon gets out and the members mount in numbers and enthusiasm and, during upsurges, to general applause.

If the sort of people who believe their own PR form the core of an organisation it is not surprising that the decline is like piss dribbling away on hot concrete hard-standings close to industrial waste skips to be evaporated by the sun.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

The plays are meant to be seen, not read in isolation.

It's a debatable point. Originally they were written and rewritten and I think actors get a bit in the way of plumbing Shakespeare's mind at the moments of inspiration and of those less so which were required for the cliches of the theatre in those days. And those to save his skin.

Shakespeare's mind is far more interesting than the minds of a crowd of Thespians coagulated around a Dramatic Society or the drama department of the BBC.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Yes...but, finding something new in another's interpretation is worthwhile in itself.

One thing that seemed to require studying every year that I was teaching, was Macbeth. I can't begin to say how many times I've read that play, or how many different productions I've seen. Yet each time I always found something new.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

But finding something new is a result of missing it on previous viewings or else it isn't there to find but seems so because it is wished.

We are dealing with something of a nervous breakdown and an attempt at recovery. Whether the popularity of the plays at the time was caused by a general nervous breakdown in society is something to consider.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Words have a life of their own. It doesn't matter if those words have a theme/element that the author didn't intend. Reimagining things for a different age is every bit as valid as sticking purely to what you think the writer intended.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Is it better for ******* idiots to be COMPLETE or incomplete??

Not at all surprising that you have analysed this as badly as you analyse pretty much every language issue, Sig.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

Is it better for ******* idiots to be COMPLETE or incomplete??

JTT wrote:

Not at all surprising that you have analysed this as badly
as you analyse pretty much every language issue, Sig.

Maybe some day I 'll take the time
to figure out a way to surprize u, J,
but not yet.

1 Reply

@aidan,

Quote:

and that's when it struck me - maybe it's a more recently adopted and accepted grammatical construct as opposed to a regional one.

It's not as new as JoefromChicago's 'so', Aidan.

I've also read of a study, can't locate it now, where it predominates even in the speech of academics and grad students in the confines of their classes, probably meaning their discussion groups etc. I believe that study was done in California.

Regarding here's + plural, a Google Advanced Search, exact phrase, for "Here's your keys" brought

About 4,450,000 results

which is a considerable number for just 'keys'.

I think that, like the boy in the video with his there's + plural, you haven't noticed just how natural these are for everyday speech. Of course, I'm not saying that everyone says them all the time. Certainly both forms are heard. What the actual breakdown is would be pretty difficult to determine.

0 Replies

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