Re: YAGGT (was Re: Juvenile fooleries (was Re: Neanderthal and PIE (Long!)))

Do you mean in German or in English? Oh dear. Although Lars M's explanation
was quite thorough -- thanks!

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>wrote:

> On Oct 17, 2008, at 3:56 AM, Lars Mathiesen wrote:
>
>  2008/10/16 Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
>>
>>> Christophe's post contained the clause "battling gods was not considered
>>> unusual", which made me a little confused for a while: since when did it
>>> become standard fare for humans to challenge the preeminence of deities?
>>> Then it struck me, after approximately 5 milliseconds.
>>>
>>
> Indeed, the only way to interpret "battling gods was ..." would be as you
> did. If he had said "battling gods were ...", "battling" would be a
> participle rather than a gerund.
>
>
>  It also reminded me
>>> of the other thread about participles. I gave it a brief thought, and
>>> don't
>>> think Latin, Greek or any of the Romance languages have such an
>>> ambiguity.
>>> Neither do Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Does German? Or is English is
>>> only
>>> language with such a muddle?
>>>
>>
>>

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