[Pan-users] Re: OT: English [was Re: Re: freeze, high CPU getting new headers]

[walt]

On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:06:41 +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 10:35:51 am walt wrote:

>> ...
>> My old 7th grade English teacher would now rap you on your knuckles
>> with a ruler, shouting "Antecedent! Antecedent!"
 
> Antecedent? As in, "A preceding occurrence or cause or event", and
> similar definitions? I don't understand. Did your teacher suffer from
> Tourette's Syndrome, causing her (him?) to yell out irrelevant words at
> awkward moments?

Well, if I spent my life in a room filled with my 7th grade class I'd be
shouting words too, but not those words.

4. (Gram.) The noun to which a relative refers; as, in the
 sentence "Solomon was the prince who built the temple,"
 prince is the antecedent of who.
 [1913 Webster]

> [...]
>> (Oh crap, now my old teacher
>> would whack my knuckles for ending a sentence with a preposition.)
> 
> I hope you would say, "Listen up you old biddy, if ending sentences with
> prepositions was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, to say
> nothing of Winston Churchill and the Queen herself, it's good enough for
> me."
> 
> http://www.dailywritingtips.com/go-ahead-put-that-preposition-at-the-
end/
> http://grammartips.homestead.com/prepositions2.html
> http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling009.html

Still, it was a practice up with which she did not put.  I see that in
my last reply to Duncan I typed "it's" to indicate the possessive. One
more whack on the knuckles for me.