Subject: | |
From: | |
Reply To: | |
Date: | Sun, 12 Mar 2006 13:18:01 -0600 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Dear Linda:
The fact is that "running from the back of his skull down to the
front, is a patch of white hair" is a metaphorical expression. Hair
does not *run* as a *patch* *from the back of* someone's skull* down
to the front[of the skull]* A "literal" rendering of the same
proposition might be:
"There is a patch of white hair from the back of his skull down to
the front[of his skull]"
So, in this case, the use of the Present Progressive tense cannot be
understood literally, but figuratively. Such being the case, we need
to decide if we want to perform a strict grammatical analysis of the
syntactic structure under discussion, or semantic-discourse analysis
of the propositional meaning of the same structure. And if we take
the second option things get quite complicated.
I would stay with the strict grammatical analysis of the syntactic
structure and try to make sense of it by ordering the sentence
components in the basic SVO English sentence structure.
Eduard
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006, Linda Didesidero wrote...
>
>The problem is with the verb ‘running’ in the progressive form.
>With the verbs ‘running’ and ‘riding’ in the active sense,
we can get
>structures similar to that in question:
>I am running home.
>I run home all the time.
>Running home am I.
>The boy is riding down the street.
>The boy rides down the street every day at 5.
>Riding down the street is the boy.
>*The red marks are running all down my essay.
>The red marks run all down my essay.
>Running all down my essay are red marks.
>The objection (from Bruce, I think) is that you do not typically
use ‘running
>’ in the sense of denoting a location (not even a path) in the
progressive
>form. So here are the two possibilities that I can see:
>1. The most obvious is that “running” is part of the verb (as
Eduard
>suggests) in the way that ‘ride’ and ‘run’ are parts of
the verb in examples
>above. The base form in the progressive is odd, at best, and
unacceptable at
>the least.
>2. Another possibility is that ‘running’ introduces some sort of
locative
>phrase or idiom or complement, which is what I think the other
contributors
>were suggesting.
>The hairline runs from here to there.
>Running from here to there is a hairline.
>*A hairline is running from here to there.
>Intriguing.
>Linda DiDesidero
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>and select "Join or leave the list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
|
|