@tchrist Try it with a verb that does not need do, such as be or any auxiliary.
@tchrist That much is obvious.
> Long ere Morgoth found the path to Gondolin could the virid tendrils of corruption be observed, penetrating the mountains thitherto obscure and undisturbed.
Although it seems decidedly un-Tolkienesque to describe corruption as virid and its absence as obscurity.
There are two verbs need, which mean the same thing but use different constructions:
1.
He need not be concerned.
Need I be concerned?
This need is sometimes called a modal verb (although others find this term inconsistent): it always requires an infinitive without to; it doesn't ...
@tchrist OK, and so a subordinate clause could license the same construction to follow?
@Færd Oh. I didn't see the 'lintel' suggestion. That sounds better. It's more of a larger scale item, like for big doors or windows in stone buildings, a large flat piece of stone that supports all above the opening. 'head' or 'header' seemed really bland to me. But for more nuance, I sorta confuse lintel with sill (but not the other way around, you put things like knickknacks on the windowsill because it's often the only flat place that is available.
'threshold' seems more common metaphorically, so it seems strange to apply it literally to the pieces of wood that helps close off the bottom of the doorway with the door. Comparison at nbooks
@Mitch Yeah, I glanced over some COCA hits, and they attest to that. I guess I'll use head(er) for commonplace bland door frames, and lentil for the other ones.
@Færd lintel for the cross beam at the to of a door, lentil for soup.
I can hardly pronounce them differently or hear the difference.
@Cerberus As the resident classicist, I have a question for you. How arbitrary is word order in Latin? That's a bit broad. Of course in entry level Latin, they tell you that the word order is arbitrary and you can get all the meaning from case and agreement. But really? I feel like the fancy writers of were just taking great advantage of that to move words around to sound poetic and fancy, and the normal people had a pretty strict word order. Of course regular people weren't the ones writing.
@Mitch Even in ordinary prose, word order is much freer than in English.
But there are still some absolute rules, and many rules from which you would only deviate under certain circumstances.
For example, finite verbs tend to come at the end of a clause, but they can be moved around for emphasis.
The object of a praeposition can never come before it.
Subject and object can often be placed anywhere in the clause, which will only change the emphasis (topic/focus) to some degree.
A word can almost never be moved across a clause boundary.
Etc. etc.
In poetry, however, the order becomes much, much freer.
Even the objects of praepositions can be placed before them, but that is then considered a special figure of speech (hyperbaton).
We once did an exercise where all the case endings and verb endings had been removed from a passage from De Bello Gallico (all words were rendered in their 'dictionary' form).
It was still readable, though some extra reading-time was required; and we were able to restore the correct endings almost 100%, after some puzzling.
But that would probably not be possible in poetry.
In fact, you even need to consider the length of some vowels in order to read the text correctly, which you can only get from the metre.
Otherwise, you wouldn't know whether the goddess crushed the angry rocks or the angry goddess crushes the rocks.
@Cerberus nice...thanks for the long response. I guess I should have thought of De Bello Gallico (and others of Caesar's war commentaries) to be more non-fancy. But the main issue is 'can' and 'tend to', because all the 'vulgar' versions of Latin have pretty strict syntax (but also very little inflection). I mean English has barely any syntax at all in poetry.
I feel like my question and your answer has been repeated thousands of times.
By the way, I really liked Loeb DBG, because 1) side by side translation into English and 2) in the chapter on crossing the Rhine, there was a foldout of how the wooden bridge was designed.
Kind of like the maps and calendars and language descriptions in The Lord of the Rings.
> They [=black people] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.
part of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857 (shortly before the Civil War)
@Færd No. Before there refers to a time before a specified date or time, which is not given in that fragment you quote but surely must exist, or at least be implied.
@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ What? No! Don't you listen to the news? He becomes King. That's what it's all about. The whole trilogy is propaganda by one of his speech writers to deflect attention to Frodo made up to be a hero. It's all to cover up Aragorn's quietly executed genocide of the orcs.
Oh, but Bilbo dies.
@tchrist Verbs? I don't to its verbs any more. What a waste of my time. The less verbs the better. A rose by any other name... Sweet!
@Cerberus He's probably thinking French, which is worst at this by having such a strict syntax. Spanish especially, but also Portuguese and Italian give you more latitude here.
@Robusto Thanks. Maybe it means "before this case was started", because apparently it made some news during the years before it reached the Supreme Court.
@Cerberus I think not. He's saying that before doesn't mark the beginning of an interval the way since does, but refers to something else that is implied or stated elsewhere in the text.
Apparently "before" there means "before the Constitution came into force" (link):
> The first was that Scott had no right to sue in federal court because neither slaves nor free blacks were citizens of the United States. At the time the Constitution was adopted, the Chief Justice wrote, blacks had been "regarded as beings of an inferior order" with "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
@tchrist Yes. I was referring to the modern vulgar versions ( the latitude in Spanish and Italian I don't know about), not Vulgar Latin, and thinking mostly of French.
But, also not knowing anything, I am contending that Vulgar Latin wasn't so free. (as vague as that sounds).
Also "They [=black people] had for more than a century before been regarded..." sounds fine to me. It might be mixing grammatical patterns but it sounds fine.
"Un perro lo muerde" and "Lo muerde un perro" mean the same thing. The dog is still the subject in both cases. The difference is whether you want to emphasize one part or the other.
Plus accusatives are marked with personal "a" so we know it wasn't the dog getting bitten.
El perro mordió al hombre.
There the dog bit the man. You know who does what because of the "a" not because of the ordering.
@Cerberus In a novel. It's supposedly a Latin motto someone lifted to put on a sign, without him knowing what it meant. I thought perhaps there was a joke in there at the expense of the person pretending to erudition, but you never know.
@tchrist but how common are those other possibilities. You can totally do the same (as Cerb notes) in English. Foppishly of course but still it is possible.
It's like how when everybody had to change their -burgh cities' names to -burg cities by imperial federal fiat, but Pittsburgh told them to take a hike because they didn't want to change all their signs etc.
There are two verbs need, which mean the same thing but use different constructions:
1.
He need not be concerned.
Need I be concerned?
This need is sometimes called a modal verb (although others find this term inconsistent): it always requires an infinitive without to; it doesn't ...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…