Re: "glow pear"

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
> >  So you read through a whole family sage crammed into one long run-on
> > sentence, all the while thinking you know what is going on, only to
> > have it negated by an -un just before the full stop. Maddning, or
> > hilarious, depending.
> English has absolutely nothing like this that I or anyone else with even
> a smattering of belles lettres ability could think of . . . not!
Nothing that negates the whole of what has gone before, but the
concept of separable prefix ("Please close the door" is "Machen
Sie die Tür zu, bitte"--literally, Make you the door to, please)
finally made me understand why it is NOT always "wrong" to "end a
sentence with a `preposition'." Some of those "prepositions" are
actually functioning like separable prefixes (English is, after
all, a Germanic language). Flash, what would "This is a piece of
pedantry I won't put up with" be in German?
I have a bad habit of finishing other people's sentences for
them--esp. if they are slow speakers (I rattle on at a shocking
rate). One friend to whom I do it took it in very good part,
observing that another friend of his did it too. She is a German
lady (a Reichsfreifrau no less), and he conjectured that people
who speak German (as she does) or read a lot of Latin (as I do)
get used to the meat of a sentence coming at the end, and so
learn to anticipate what's coming.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx