"conceive (of)"

Tue Dec 9 18:26:52 UTC 2008

And then there's "approve (of)? That's another one with people appear
to have different intuitions or different perceptions as to what
constitutes the "correct" form in a variety of contexts..

For example, the common, if not standard, political-ad tag line:

"I'm John Doe and I _approve_ this message"

Should be, IMO:

"... _approve of_ this message."

OTOH, I've just flashed on the possibility that I've been mishearing
this bromide and it is actually:

"I'm John Doe and I _approved_ this message."

In that case, I have only the very minor quibble that *perhaps* the
line would be "better" in the form:

"... I _have approved_ this message."

Nevertheless, I still find that the form:

"... _(have) approved of_ this image"

is, somewhat like Jesus, still all right with me. However, the
"of"-less version of either the Perfect or the Present Perfect won't
send me fleeing from the room in tears, in any case.

But, at this point in time, the development of English seems to be
trending toward the loss of the Present Perfect in favor of the
Perfect, whereas German and the Romance languages appear to have a
preference for the Present Perfect-equivalent, to the detriment of the
Perfect.

But that's merely the impression that I've gotten from casual reading.
I leave the ultimate decision to those with greater expertise.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      "conceive (of)"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:24 PM -0500 12/8/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> The OED, as quoted by Mark M.:
>>
>> " ... now _conceived_ as a desolate, barren region, waterless and
>> treeless, and with but scanty growth of herbage ..."
>>
>> IMO, this should be
>>
>> "... _conceived of_ ..."
>>
>> But who am I to second-guess the OED?
>
> the OED's entry for "conceive" has cites for both plain transitive
> "conceive" and of intransitive "conceive of" in the sense 'think of'.
> actually, in several senses 'think of':
>
>   [7b]  To form or evolve the idea of (any creation of skill or
> genius).
>
>   1875 JOWETT Plato (ed. 2) V. 4 The mind which conceived the Republic.
>
> ("conceive of" would also be possible here for me);
>
>   [8]  To form a mental representation or idea of; to form or have a
> conception or notion of; to think of, imagine.
>
>   1888 Jewish Q. Rev. I. 55 The Rabbis could not conceive such a
> monstrosity as atheistic orthodoxy.
>
> (again, "conceive of" is possible for me, indeed much preferable);
>
>   [8d]  intr. to conceive of: To form or have a conception of, think
> of, imagine. [the transitive uses are earlier than these intransitive
> uses]
>
>   1871 RUSKIN Munera P. Pref. (1880) 10 He cannot conceive of any
> quality of essential badness or goodness existing in pictures.
>
> turning now to google, a search on {"conceive it as"} yields a big
> pile of examples, most of which seem to be in writing on philosophy or
> religion.  for example, from Ariew, Grene, & Grene in Descartes and
> His Contemporaries, in a passage speculating about what Hobbes would
> have said:
>
>   If you conceive it as extended, you conceive it as a body, and you
> grant ... If you conceive it as nonextended, you conceive a thing
> which has a power ...
>
> a few more cites, from diverse sources:
>
>   Sheila: I think we should conceive it as A Man and a Woman have
> Dinner with Andre—'cause then you have three characters, so that's
> interesting.
> canopycanopycanopy.com/1/a_logical_love_story
>
>   Some Semantic Web authors conceive it as a hierarchy of "semantic
> interpretations" (a meta-ontology provides "semantics" to the bottom
> ontologies).
> users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/skywritings/index.php?/archives/23-The-
> Syntactic-Web.html
>
>   "People conceive it as very glamorous," says Brown. "But day to
> day, it can be fairly ordinary." Before moving to the academy, she
> worked as a freelance ...
> www.guardian.co.uk/money/2004/apr/05/careers.jobsadvice
>
> apparently, transitive "conceive" is still alive and kicking, and
> varies with intransitive "conceive of" in a number of contexts.
> historically, this is preposition addition, and i would have expected
> handbooks to complain about the prepositional version (on Omit
> Needless Words grounds) -- or perhaps to complain about the transitive
> version (on Include All Necessary Words grounds) -- but so far as i
> can tell, none of the handbooks even mention the alternation.
>
> Wilson Gray continued:
>
>> OTOH, Google yields many examples of the type:
>>
>> "COUPLE UNABLE TO _CONCEIVE OF_ CHILD
>>
>> "MARCH 20, 2008 | ISSUE 44*12
>>
>> "FREEPORT, ME-After six months of attempting to _conceive of_ having
>> children, local couple Beth and Nathan Jablonski told reporters ..."
>
> definitely preposition addition.  a few more examples:
>
>   Thus, because the petitioner relied on the respondent's actions in
> agreeing to conceive of a child through artificial insemination,  ...
> lawprofessors.typepad.com/lgbtlaw/2007/10/same-sex-partne.html
>
>   ...  she may have the satisfaction of knowing that she can make it
> possible for some lucky couple to conceive of a child. ...
> www.jhunewsletter.com/news/2002/03/29/Features/The-Process.Behind.Egg.Donation-2248251.shtml
>
>   Mae will joke that the only way she could have conceived of a child
> is immaculately. The desperate Maggie is subject to a miserable second
> virginity, ...
> www.sparknotes.com/drama/cat/canalysis.html
>
> these strike me as very odd.  but they're certainly out there.
>
> arnold
>
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