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Re: off topic: Gramm[a!]r Question



David Auerbach wrote:
≪ Sound-meaning correlations in language are conventional,≫
Initially, sure. (Even onommatopeic words differ from culture to culture: dogs don't go "bow-wow" everywhere.) But once you have a language (or related languages) evolving, then certain sounds come to have certain meanings, and violent changes can be confusing to say the least. That's the truth behind the prescriptivists' insistance on etymological meaning. To me, knowing that English _comprise_ comes from Fr. _compris_ and that from Latin _comprehendere,_ all of which denote some sort of taking together, using the word to mean "constitute, make up" is as awkward as putting gloves on my feet or shoes on my hands would be. That's why I make it a principle to resist changes in meaning that contradict the etymology of a word.
And apologies for the double post. I wrote the one, then saw Carl's
mention of Quirk and rewrote it, but Thunderbird made two separate posts
of it.

Patricia M. Godfrey