Re: Tricky translations

On 21 Jan 2005, at 12.34 am, caeruleancentaur wrote:

> Rene Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@W...> cecóópa:
>
>> The printer spat out a sheet of paper.
>> Der Drucker spuckte einen Blatt Papier aus.
>> De printer spuugde een blad papier uit.
>
>
> It is also possible to say "the printer spat a sheet of paper out,"
> but this is more likely, I believe, if there is more to the sentence,
> e.g., "the printer spat a sheet of paper out through the other end."
I dunno, I'd probably come up with 'the printer spat a piece of paper
out'... *Much* nicer stress pattern. In any case, if you're using a
pronoun, the split form is required:
  the printer spit it out
  *the printer spit out it

English, though, has indeed lost the prefixed form: *The printer's
outspitting it; *There was an outspitting of paper.

> BTW, my thanks for using "spat."  One hears "spitted" so often
> nowadays.  Imagine the sound of a sentence like "the printer spitted
> it out."
Really? I don't think I've ever heard it. If I was going to come up
with something other than 'spat', it'd be 'spit' (i.e. the past and
present would have the same form, as in 'hit'). Err... as you can see,
from my examples above.

> I mourn the eventual demise of "stank" and "shrank."  In
> cases like that the participle is replacing the past form.
I'm not sure I could tell you if the correct one was:
  it shrank
or
  it shrunk
neither of:
  it has shrank
or
  it has shrunk
remarkably, though, I can tell that
  it's shrunk
is correct and
  *it's shrank
is not (from which I can conclude that 'it has shrank' is also
ungrammatical and that, in all probability, 'it shrunk' is the one that
makes your ears bleed).

--
Tristan.