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

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

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