"conceive (of)"

[Alison Murie]

On Dec 9, 2008, at 9:01 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "conceive (of)"
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> At 5:38 PM -0800 12/9/08, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>> On Dec 9, 2008, at 5:22 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: "conceive (of)"
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>>>
>>> My terminology may be somewhat antiquated, given that it's
>>> grammatical
>>> terminology from fifty years ago, itself based on English "grammar"
>>> from possibly fifty years before then. Perhaps nummbering would be
>>> more transparent:
>>>
>>> 1) I act
>>> 2) I acted
>>> 3) I have acted
>>>
>>> But it seems to me that there was once wide variation in the
>>> terminology and a person was forever having to translate the
>>> terminology that he was reading or hearing into the terminology to
>>> which he was accustomed on the basis of the example(s) provided...
>>
>> 2) has different labels in English -- "past", "simple past",
>> "preterite", "imperfect" -- but never, in my experience, "present
>> perfect" (for English).
>>
> And I'd wager that "imperfect" is somewhat misleading here too.
> Wouldn't that make more sense for what I guess would also be called
> the past progressive, i.e. "I was acting"?
>
> LH
~~~~~~~~~
As I recall, that was the model we got in Latin for the imperfect: i.e.,
Subj was verbing.

OT but on definitions:  A friend, knowing we rarely observe Xmas
except to hope
that it will bring an end to all the noisy, ugly hype, recommended
that we "have
a Jewish christmas", defined as ordering in Chinese & going to a movie.
AM

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