Re: "Assume for a/the moment"



FB wrote:
>
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 21:27:32 -0500, Don Phillipson wrote:
>
> > "FB" <fam.balducciNOSPAM@xxxxxx> wrote in message
> > news:198xpb4o6t7m7$.8yhgft6jdmrp$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >> "The moment" => "this moment", broadly speaking. I believe in ancient
> >> Greek articles were originally pronouns and adjectives. "A moment" => "any
> >> moment".
> >
> > True or false, this may be irrelevant, so far as Greek
> > grammar was no direct ancestor of English grammar.
>
> Yes, but it's an odd coincidence that articles exist in many languages and
> are used in similar ways.
>
If you mean in European languages, consider that the place is more of a
linguistic soup than a mess of separate entrees tinned up in their own
Tupperware. Ideas from one language can easily mix in with another due
even to polylingualism.



--
He and Evie soon fell into a conversation of the "No, I didn't; yes, you
did" type--conversation which, though fascinating to those who are
engaged in it, neither desires nor deserves the attention of others.
-+E.M. Forster, "Howards End"
.

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