[lit-ideas] Re: gigawatt chivalrous inflammatory handyman drainage
- From: "Michael Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 22:40:07 -0500
JL wrote:
> With all due respect, I think Geary is misunderstanding me.
I'm impressed with JL's courtesy. I usually have no respect for those who
disagree with me. Blithering idiots. Nevertheless I'll accept all the
respect he dues me.
I did indeed misunderstand. I thought his "gigawatt (chivalrous
inflammatory handyman drainage)." was presented as a way of saying gigawatt
is the subject and all in perentheses are merely modifiers.
But, of course, my main objection remains. The phrase has no meaning and
has any meaning you want -- or are able to make up out of the words. Why is
that important. Because that's what we humans do best. Except kill one
another. But we usually do that over what we've made up. So I withdraw my
exception.
Lord, grant me gigawatts of your chivalrous ways. Be my handyman, O Lord,
and flush my inflammatory enemies down your drainage.
Amen.
Mike Geary
----- Original Message -----
From: <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 9:35 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: gigawatt chivalrous inflammatory handyman drainage
> Geary writes:
> >I must say JL's response, though learned indeed, is
> >typical of schoolmen and marm's. He hopes that by
> >determining the parts of speech of the words that he can
> >determine then the subject of the phrase and thereby
> >the meaning therein. With the insights provided by his
> >Spanish google translator, Speranza suggests that the
> >subject is 'gigawatt', not 'drainage' as most English
> >speakers might assume. I have no problem with this as
> >long as one realizes what nonsense it is.
>
> -----
>
> With all due respect, I think Geary is misunderstanding me. For the
recordm
> here are the five translations provided by Google Translator into German,
> French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish:
>
> chivalrous entzündliche handyman Entwässerung des gigawatt
> drainage handyman inflammatoire chevaleresque de gigawatt
> drenaggio handyman infiammatorio chivalrous del gigawatt
> drenagem handyman inflammatory chivalrous do gigawatt
> drenaje handyman inflamatorio chivalrous del gigawatt
>
> Note that _all_ translations use 'gigawatt' in the genitive ('des
gigawatt',
> 'de gigawatt', etc.). From what I gather that, had English a particle like
> 'de', it would use it, too.
>
> In any case, what I suggested was _not_ that the subject is 'gigawatt',
for
> it is hard for something in the _genitive_ to be a grammatical subject.
What I
> was merely suggested -- with the insight the translations provide -- is
that
> the subject is indeed 'drainage', but that 'gigawatt' applied to
_drainage_
> (had wider syntactic scope) and not to 'handyman' (narrow scope). But I
guess you
> knew that. And that's why I wrote that I guessed you knew that...
>
> It would seem that, logically, 'chivalrous' _could_ refer to 'handyman'
> ('chivalrous handyman'). One problem there is that 'inflammatory' is in
the middle
> ('chivalrous inflammatory handyman') -- which would force you to apply
> 'inflamatory' to 'handyman' too, rather than 'drainage'?
>
> Cheers,
>
> JL
>
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