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Re: (In)transitive verbs

From:Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 8:30
I think we have something close to that case in
French, namely the distinction between 'cense' (last
letter = e acute) and 'sense' (the same).

The pronunciation is exactly the same in both cases.
But the first one means 'supposed to', and the secund
one, 'judicious':
Il est cense faire ce travail = He is supposed to do
that job
C'est un homme sense = This man has all his wits

Nearly nobody knows the orthographic difference any
more (I've seen the confusion in all main French
newspapers, even in Le Monde), so I think that the two
words will fusionate into a single one, the meaning of
it being a mix of both. The general tendency is to
write both of them 'sense' (e acute).

--- "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 04:06:23PM -0800, Costentin > Cornomorus wrote: > > > lie vs. lay > > > > Another confusing verb! I personally try to avoid > > that pair whenever I can, because I confuse them. > > That is a sign that the distinction is probably > disappearing, and will no > doubt be gone in a few generations. But for what > it's worth: > > to tell an untruth: lie, lied, have lied > to recline (intransitive): lie, lay, have lain > to cause to recline (transitive): lay, laid, have > laid > > The fact that "lay" is also a form of "lie" is the > source of much of the > confusion. > > -Mark
===== Philippe Caquant "Le langage est source de malentendus." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html