🚀 go-pugleaf

I too was highly offended by the tone of D. Edward's posting to you, but
you have complained about a couple of things that were correct as they
stood.

Mike Stanton wrote:

> >_Cambridge encyclopedia of language_
> Now is it all supposed to be in Title Case or are we in e e cummings
> territory here? BTW since when did _ replace " in English punctuation?
> I presume that you mean "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" by
> David Crystal?

The symbol _        _ is a common indicator of italic type. Thus it is
correct for the title of a book. The symbol "         " is used for the
titles of articles, poems, short stories, and unpublished materials like
dissertations. The symbol *          * is also used for book titles.

> >anaphora
> 
> Kalen asked:
> >And anaphora is?
> It is a technical term, not in general usage, taken from the Greek and
> means "repetition."
> It is the rhetorical devise of starting a succession of sentences or
> lines with the same word or phrase.

This is not the meaning used in linguistics.

> Or it can mean just the opposite: the use of a word such as "it" or
> "do" to avoid repetition of a previous word or phrase.

Anaphora is the replacement of a noun (for instance) by a pronoun. If we
didn't have pronouns (and anaphora), our sentences could become very
cumbersome!

> I too would be curious to learn what this has to do with gender,
> unless it is another typo and he meant to write "anaphrodisiac" which
> means, "tending to diminish sexual desire." That is usually, in my
> experience, a gender issue.

Someone's example of a French sentence showed how the gender of the
pronoun helps connect the pronoun with the correct noun. There are
languages with lots of genders, such as Swahili, and in those languages,
the gender tells you much more about which words go with which other
words. For instance, verbs agree in gender with their subjects. (In
English, verbs only agree in number with their subjects.)
-- 
Peter T. Daniels     grammatim@worldnet.att.net