Scott:
We're not questioning that Medieval writers had thoughts as complete as
ours (or at least, I know I'm not questioning that, and I doubt anyone
else would). It's just that the relation between "complete thought" and
"sentence" isn't as straightforward as it's sometimes presented. Compare
the following:
1. Most of us wanted pizza, although Bjarki wanted surstromming.
2. Most of us wanted pizza. *Although Bjarki wanted
surstromming.
3. Most of us wanted pizza. However, Bjarki wanted surstromming.
I'd have enormous trouble trying to support the claim that "although"
gives you one complete thought in #1, but "however" leads to two
complete thoughts in #3, and that anyone who wrote #2 (both parts, not
just the second) was having incomplete thoughts. That *issue* would not,
I think, have come up in the medieval period -- you wrote it, and it
made sense, so it was complete.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 4:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sentences are modern inventions. NOT; was ATEG Digest - 24
Jun 2008 to 25 Jun 2008 (#2008-144)
Having read facsimiles and a few original medieval documents, I am well
aware that they did not have our modern sentence structure nor did they
necessarily start with a capital and end with a period. The primary
point is that they did have complete thoughts and wrote them. That we
may choose to punctuate them by joining two independent clauses with a
colon or semicolon in lieu of having two short sentences is irrelevant
to the concept that medieval writers did not, as a general rule, write
in sentences.
I must be missing some critical point. All I read are allegations.
Unless someone gets on line and starts citing a number of medieval
MSS that do not have complete sentences) preferably MSS in Latin,
German, or Romance languages (Koine is too argumentative), I tend to
consider such allegations specious.
Scott
I'm from MS not MO, but show me anyway.
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