Re: [TIED] Beekes' Translation English.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 8:20 PM

Subject: [TIED] Beekes' Translation English.

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The most important categorizations of inflectional types which can be made is that in ā-, o- and consonant stems (C-stems), the Greek and Latin 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions. [13.2.4, p.175]

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Mark corrects Gabiner's translation of Beekes:

The most important category of inflectional types is that of the ā-, o- and consonant stems (C-stems) -- the Greek and Latin 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions.

 

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The translation is really atrocious, for such a simple thought. If your quote is faithful (I haven't got a copy at hand), Gabiner's subject and verb disagree grammatically. I'd phrase it like this:

 

The most important inflectional classes are stems ending in ā, o, or in a consonant (corresponding, respectively, to the Greek and Latin 1st, 2nd and 3rd declensions).

 

One reason why I love English as a vehicle for ideas and arguments is that verbosity, padding and syntactic gymnastics look so much out of place in it.

 

Piotr