Re: Noun tense

> On Tue, 2002-07-23 at 05:14, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> > In general, I would disagree with the proposition that these
> > cliticized verb forms are evidence that English are likely
> > someday to mark tense on nouns.  Evidence that they're still
> > clitics comes from grammatical constructions like the following:
> >
> > "The Man raving wildly's been rather active lately."
This may be grammatical for you, but to me it looks like a "mistake" for
either

"The man's raving wildly's been rather active lately"
or
"The man who's raving wildly's been rather active lately"

(Out of context I thought the first though I'm sure it's more likely the
second)

Either way doesnt sound too natural though...Hmm... Not because of the "'s" on
"wildly", but maybe just the sentence structure is weird, either because of
all the adjectives or just the location of "raving wildly".  (Reminds me of
the line in Zork Nemesis: "...to monks' long dead bells that play..." even
though the monks are long dead, not the bells)  Now, if "the man raving
wildly" was the name of a rock band...

I asked a friend offlist what was wrong with the sentence and he said:

    << you can't use 's to represent the word has, man
       should not be capitalized, and it sure seems to
       need a "who" or "that" and a "was" or "is" in there >>

(I dont quite agree...)



    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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