vi vs. english grammar (was: Fwd: sub.mot)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 29, 2004, at 10:39 AM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> Arnold wrote:
>
>> the story so far:  i posted the following...
>>
>>> a request (which i will explain soon): please tell me -- by e-mail
>>> if at all possible -- how you would read this piece of code
>>> ("s/while/after/") out *as a sentence of english*.
>
> My reaction to that was "substitute, for 'while', 'after'".
>
> As you can see, I am an unregenerate and hardshell user of original
> "substitute". If I had to _write_ such a sentence, I might or might
> not use
> the commas, but in reading aloud I would pause to set off the fronted
> PP.

ah, this is (a punctuational/prosodic variant of) response #1.2.

arnold