Siouanists, eat your heart out.

[Rankin, Robert L]

That's very nice.  I was just telling a Cherokee fellow in my Indian
Languages survey class that it didn't matter linguistically whether or not
he spoke like his grandfather did, because all languages evolve constantly.
This is a good case in point.  How many generations has it been since
'would' was truly the past tense of 'will' and was required by the
sequence-of-tenses rules in English sentences like the one below?  I'll use
the example in my next class.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan H. Hartley
To: Siouan
Sent: 2/6/02 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Siouanists, eat your heart out.

M. Lewis 1 Aug. 1806 (Jrnls. VIII.145):

"I determined to halt..and indeavour to dry my skins of the bighorn
which had every appearance of spoiling, an event which I would not
should happen"

Alan