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Q. Is there a rigid rule with regard to the use of the preterite tense? When do you say "hung" and when do you say "hanged"? A. Two examples from a universally recognised authority will illustrate the flexibility of our language in the general use of tenses: "'I know a gen'l'man, sir, said Mr. Q. What is "elegance" in style?
For example, I never knew what the word preterite meant until years after completing my course, although I had repeated over and over again that the preterite, or past perfect, was thus, while the imperfect was thus, without having any conception that the word preterite meant past that it was a past that was entirely past in the former case, and a past that was past to a less degree in the latter.
But another auxiliary or opposite signification also accompanies it and shares its labours viz., Zi, to stay or repose. Thus Ya enters into the future tense, and Zi in the preterite of all verbs requiring auxiliaries. Ya, as a termination, implies by analogy, progress, movement, efflorescence.
It consisted chiefly in conjugating Latin verbs, especially such as were obstinately irregular. To show him a withered frost-bitten verb, that wanted its preterite, wanted its supines, wanted, in fact, everything in this world, fruits or blossoms, that make a verb desirable, was to earn the Don's gratitude for life.
The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them highly as a preterite phenomenon; but they were not good at cakes and ale, and that is one reason why they are a preterite phenomenon. I suppose we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck whenever he likes, so it be not down our street.
My classmate, who doubtless entertained as little liking for chemistry as I did for grammar, had not been able throughout his entire course to grasp the definition of an element, as I had never been able to comprehend what a preterite might be.
It is not impossible that the French termination in esse helped to make the confusion. We have in the opposite way made a plural of riches, which was once singular. Some persons used the strong preterites, and some the weak, some said snew, thew, sew, and some snowed, thawed, sowed. Bishop Latimer used the preterite shew, which Mr.
As old Villotte says from whose work I first contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian 'Est verborum transitivorum, quorum infinitivus but I forgot, you don't understand Latin. He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is in outsaniel; the preterite in outsi; the imperative in one; for example parghatsout-saniem, I irritate "
The Puritans were good in their way, and we enjoy them highly as a preterite phenomenon: but they were not good at cakes and ale, and that is one reason why they are a preterite phenomenon. I suppose we are all willing to let a public censor like P.V. run amuck whenever he likes, so it be not down our street.
Plural numbers, signs of tense, and other grammatical elements, are evolved by means of the juxtaposition of similar but not identical elements, e.g. one plural may be formed by the affix signifying many; another, by the affix signifying with or conjointly; one preterite may be the root plus a word meaning then; another the root plus a word meaning there.
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