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Re: OT: Merry Christmas!

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Sunday, December 26, 2004, 16:16
Philip Newton scripsit:

> "L'enfant pauvre" -- "Le pauvre enfant" > "The poor child (he has no money)" -- "The poor child (he is to be pitied)"
The general pan-Romance principle (which has many exceptions, and is probably most fully executed in Italian) is that postposed adjectives are normal, literal, and/or restrictive, whereas preposed adjectives are exceptional, figurative, and/or incidental.
> Which is particularly interesting to me because both meanings are > translated as "poor" in English :)
Not too surprising, since E poor < OF povre. -- My corporate data's a mess! John Cowan It's all semi-structured, no less. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan But I'll be carefree cowan@ccil.org Using XSLT http://www.reutershealth.com On an XML DBMS.