Aperçus of The Language Instinct

sigh

Belvedere Jehosophat - Monday, 9 November 2009 - 22:33:47

Sigh: to, well, I say “to,” but I’d like to clarify. I don’t mean “to” as a preposition, and neither do I mean it as an adverb. No, when I say “to,” I refer to the infinitive marker, that basic form of a verb without an inflection binding it to a particular subject or tense.

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Why you call a building a building when it is already built

Ethan Switch - Monday, 11 September 2006 - 10:26:28

Buildings, though built, inspire the building of other buildings by future builders who are turned on to building buildings by visiting the building or by being in its presence.

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Music

Belvedere Jehosophat - Tuesday, 11 April 2006 - 16:14:24

Music is all but banned in the city. To say that the songs are sanitised would be an understatement. After all, there are three committees to which songs, by obligation, are submitted for approval before they can be performed in public or listened to in private. (Of course, it goes without saying that the elders would prefer that the citizens keep their private activity to the absolute minimum.)

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Shifty Apostrophes and the demise of the Hyphen

Ethan Switch - Friday, 22 August 2003 - 13:20:33

From the stately finger amputating printers of Oxford University Press, the new second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English has started the run and word is out that times are looking grim for the once favoured younger neighbour of the underscore. The hyphen.

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