Re: OT: Who said it?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
> The idea was "the practice to which I've attained." I'm not sure it
> makes sense. Here's one I've used in a logic course:
Well then, what's the subject of "become accustomed"?
One doesn't, surely, attain to an issue. You still have
more verbs than subject for them.
> I found myself saying, when Lee asked me to join him for what would turn
> out in retrospect to have made from the standpoint of one unfamiliar,
> except on a level that
> even a third-grader with his familiarity of the desert might attain, an
> instructive trip, `"Sure."
Likewise here, the sentence is perfectly clear (though
certainly awkwardly phrased, at least in English,
though it would be, I think, fairly normal in German),
except for that "to have made an instructive trip."
Surely the idiomatic English for that, in any word
order, would be "to have been an instructive trip"?
> John where the teacher had had had had had had had had had had the
> teacher's approval.
>
> Punctuated:
> John, where the teacher had had "had had," had had "had"; "had had" had
> the teacher's approval.
Very nice. But I'd expect an Aristotelo-Thomist to cite
the principle of contradiction, which is the locus
classicus of this sort of thing: "That that is, is;
that that is not, is not; that that is, is not that
that is not; that that is not, is not that that is."
Try to read THAT without punctuation (and then remember
that the Greeks had none--but of course it may well be
clearer in Greek)!

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx