Stuff I really, really need

[mollyringle]

*swoon*

Goth-chicky black babydoll LOTR T-shirts at Hot Topic. I want, I want.

In other news, I'm considering giving you guys an exit quiz on linguistics. (Since, barring an act of God, I'll be completely done with my M.A. in about nine days - but what a dull nine days it shall be...) Just random stuff to spread the love, before I take up an office job in Seattle and forget the love. Such as, "How many tenses does English have?" and "Haiku in Japanese does not actually count by the syllable. What does it count by?"

You think about that. Or just think about how cool it would be to have a babydoll T-shirt featuring Legolas nocking an arrow.

Comments

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Wow, good work! *throws you a Hershey kiss*

Heh, 115? No idea what that's about. "Two" is indeed what I had in mind. Past and present. Things like perfect and progressive are technically "aspect," not tense, and things like subjunctive or conditional are "mood" (or "modality"). And then you can combine all those, of course, for more complex verb phrases.

Very true about the split infinitives and their origin with arbitrary Latin-loving grammarians. But actually, according to most linguists, the English infinitive is only one word as well - the "to" isn't really part of it; it's some sort of modal auxiliary verb instead. I know; my mind is blown too.
:)

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Ahh, yes, it looks like they're counting aspect as tense. Just a terminology issue, in that case. Linguists quibble amongst themselves about terminology too, so it doesn't matter much; it doesn't affect how people actually speak. But what they taught me here is that there are two tenses and a couple aspects and some modal auxiliaries, so I'll just stick with that. :)