Terrestrial comments from Will Schryver thread

[_Runtu]

Again, you fail....to understand. The nuance is in the subtle difference in meanings between the words "think" and "cogitate."

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I understand the difference, subtle or otherwise. I don't have a problem with such usage, though I prefer it to be used sparingly. When one is constantly going for erudition or nuance by throwing in extraneous or high-falutin words, it tends to get old quickly and makes the writing look amateurish.

I ran across a good example of using rough synonyms in sequence effectively in today's New York Times:

[Jennifer Lopez] has the gall, or the temerity, to lament, “People told me I should write a love song/‘Girl, you sound so angry, you could use some variation,’ ” on “(What Is) Love?,” a song for which she receives no writing credit.

"Gall and temerity" work well here, in sequence, in ways that "think and cogitate" don't. Literary devices work well in small doses, but not in a constant barrage. I think that's why I hated "The Shipping News" so much: the author tried to make every word clever, poetic, and smart. Reading it was like getting my teeth scraped at the dentist, and I had to put the book down after 50 pages or so. I never finished it. Awful stuff.

But, in the end, as you always say, "to each his or her own." I don't appreciate overdone prose, but you obviously disagree.

[_Buffalo]

Wade, your writing would give even a high school gym teacher nightmares - and not because it was over his head.

I have no reason to think that you would be in a position to know. You're just some guy posting anonymously as a buffalo. LOL

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

The fact that you're not posting anomalously tells me that you're Wade England. And we all know that good old Wade isn't an effective communicator. I'm sure you're a nice guy, but most of what you write is incoherent and jumbled, and lately overstuffed with ten dollar words.

[_Trevor]

You wouldn't say, "I pitched and threw the baseball" or "I ran and sprinted out the door" or "I drank and imbibed the Diet Coke." There isn't really a "subtle difference in meanings" between "cogitate" and "think". One is simply more specific than the other. So it begs the question: why toss in both the general and the more specific term? It's like saying, "the building was both tall and 120 stories high." If you want to call this a stylistically praiseworthy nuance, be my guest. But that doesn't change the basic fact that it's an inarticulate way of expressing an idea.

It actually reminds me of Book of Mormon language. The fondness for cognate accusatives is a form of redundancy. Also, the use of, "that is, being interpreted," to restate or clarify a passage is a decent example. The Book of Mormon always struck me as a somewhat redundant text. It could be that it inspires redundancy in its readers. Joseph Smith does seem to be an excellent exemplar of the self-educated guy who uses affected language to appear respectable. It is a familiar enough phenomenon.

[_Simon Belmont]

It actually reminds me of Book of Mormon language. The fondness for cognate accusatives is a form of redundancy. Also, the use of, "that is, being interpreted," to restate or clarify a passage is a decent example. The Book of Mormon always struck me as a somewhat redundant text. It could be that it inspires redundancy in its readers. Joseph Smith does seem to be an excellent exemplar of the self-educated guy who uses affected language to appear respectable. It is a familiar enough phenomenon.

Yeah, maybe we can reduce the Book of Mormon to 2 pages!

[_Runtu]

It actually reminds me of Book of Mormon language. The fondness for cognate accusatives is a form of redundancy. Also, the use of, "that is, being interpreted," to restate or clarify a passage is a decent example. The Book of Mormon always struck me as a somewhat redundant text. It could be that it inspires redundancy in its readers. Joseph Smith does seem to be an excellent exemplar of the self-educated guy who uses affected language to appear respectable. It is a familiar enough phenomenon.

Occasionally, I hear people from the rural Mountain West use a curious construction: "take and [verb]." I'd never heard it growing up in California, but it's interesting.

Some examples:

"Verl took and ate the whole pie."

"I think I'll take and finish plowing the eleven acres after supper."

I agree that the Book of Mormon text reads just the way you would expect it to read if the author were self-educated and trying to sound ancient or deep.

[_Trevor]

Yeah, maybe we can reduce the Book of Mormon to 2 pages!

I'm sure it would be fairly easy to summarize the contents of the Book of Mormon in a couple of single-spaced pages. I doubt it would be anywhere near as interesting, but "Ether" does manage to make many of the same points in fewer pages than the rest of the book, so clearly something like that can be done.

[_Dad of a Mormon]

Yeah, maybe we can reduce the Book of Mormon to 2 pages!

I'm sure it would be fairly easy to summarize the contents of the Book of Mormon in a couple of single-spaced pages. I doubt it would be anywhere near as interesting, but "Ether" does manage to make many of the same points in fewer pages than the rest of the book, so clearly something like that can be done.

Please, someone do that. I've attempted to read through the Book of Mormon but find it so incredibly difficult due to it's excessive wordiness.

[_Trevor]

Occasionally, I hear people from the rural Mountain West use a curious construction: "take and [verb]." I'd never heard it growing up in California, but it's interesting.

Some examples:

"Verl took and ate the whole pie."

"I think I'll take and finish plowing the eleven acres after supper."

I have read a little about the above phenomenon. I would argue that this is a little different from simple redundancy inasmuch as it seems to originate in the description of two separate stages of a process.

"Verl took and ate the whole pie"="Verl took possession of or picked up the pie and ate the whole thing."

In a way, one could argue that this introduces greater precision, where "take" is not used metaphorically.

The examples from Droopy's writing are more clearly repetitions of the same idea in a way that leads to less precision.

[_Buffalo]

You wouldn't say, "I pitched and threw the baseball" or "I ran and sprinted out the door" or "I drank and imbibed the Diet Coke." There isn't really a "subtle difference in meanings" between "cogitate" and "think". One is simply more specific than the other. So it begs the question: why toss in both the general and the more specific term? It's like saying, "the building was both tall and 120 stories high." If you want to call this a stylistically praiseworthy nuance, be my guest. But that doesn't change the basic fact that it's an inarticulate way of expressing an idea.

It actually reminds me of Book of Mormon language. The fondness for cognate accusatives is a form of redundancy. Also, the use of, "that is, being interpreted," to restate or clarify a passage is a decent example. The Book of Mormon always struck me as a somewhat redundant text. It could be that it inspires redundancy in its readers. Joseph Smith does seem to be an excellent exemplar of the self-educated guy who uses affected language to appear respectable. It is a familiar enough phenomenon.

The Book of Mormon was probably composed mostly on the fly (perhaps from a general outline), so you get a lot of corrections mid sentence. If it really were written on gold plates, Mormon must have been using a computer-guided laser engraver to get it small enough to fit such wordy, redundant prose.

[_Chap]

Occasionally, I hear people from the rural Mountain West use a curious construction: "take and [verb]." I'd never heard it growing up in California, but it's interesting.

Some examples:

"Verl took and ate the whole pie."

"I think I'll take and finish plowing the eleven acres after supper."

I have read a little about the above phenomenon. I would argue that this is a little different from simple redundancy inasmuch as it seems to originate in the description of two separate stages of a process.

"Verl took and ate the whole pie"="Verl took possession of or picked up the pie and ate the whole thing."

In a way, one could argue that this introduces greater precision, where "take" is not used metaphorically.

The examples from Droopy's writing are more clearly repetitions of the same idea in a way that leads to less precision.

Leaving Droopy out of it (a good feeling ...) may I say that I do not see a sentence like "Verl took and ate the whole pie" as a truncated form of "Verl took the whole pie, and ate it". Instead it feels to me that the verb 'to take' is being used as an intensifying auxiliary, in the same way that the verb 'to go' is used in the second sentence of this utterance:

"You know what my fool of a husband did? He went and put my silk shirt through a high-temperature wash and ruined it".

In that case, it seems to me that there is no sense of motion about 'went' - it conveys the sense of 'he proceeded to', doesn't it? And that is what I think 'took' is doing in the example given.

I am trying hard to think of a scientific (as opposed to gut feeling) way of deciding whether Trevor is right or I am (or neither of us), but I don't know enough about linguistics to be able to say. Anybody?