"have ever been"

Wed Sep 13 20:02:23 UTC 2006

On Sep 13, 2006, at 11:22 AM, Greg Pulliam wrote:

> In "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," doesn't the
> dying Spock say to Kirk something like "I am now,
> and ever have been, your friend"?  This could be
> why a fan might have chosen to use a similar
> structure.

that makes sense for my example 1.  but i suspect that the other
writers were not such devoted Star Trek fans as to know this quote.

we all run the risk here of extrapolating from possibly irrelevant
aspects of very small numbers of examples.

arnold

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