Re: English word order and bumper stickers
| From: | Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, September 14, 2004, 14:49 |
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In a message dated 9/14/2004 10:24:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
markjreed@MAIL.COM writes:
>Saw a bumper sticker this morning that gave me pause:
> AMERICA BLESS GOD
>Of course, I assume that we have a simple mistake in intent, where the
>author hasn't quite twigged onto the unidirectionality of mortal/deity
>interaction verbs in English, i.e. gods do the blessing, while worshippers
>are limited to praise/cursing, supplication, etc.
You are mistaken. "Bless" is not "unidirectional," though the meaning is
not identical in each direction.
The Gospel of Luke (in the KJV) says "24:52 And they worshipped him, and
returned to Jerusalem with great joy: 24:53 And were continually in the temple,
praising and blessing
God."
It's similar in the RSV.
People can bless God; that's a grammatical fact.
(Note these comments are solely linguistic.)
Doug
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