Re: ``wait and see''
- From: "Sinan" <Sinan@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:29:12 +0300
"Arnold Zwicky" <zwicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, haber iletisinde þunlarý
yazdý:d4e556$lau$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <426A2876.90B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Ron Hardin <rhhardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
>
> > They will wait and see
> > They will wait and will see
>
> for me, absolutely only the first, although once again the other
> version is possible as an ordinary coordination.
>
> >The past tense seems to make sense, but a little awkwardly, as if
> >something were amiss,
>
> > They waited and saw
>
Also:
They sould have waited and seen.
The problem is you need to use correct tense with both verbs. However some
languages handle it nicely.
As an example, Turkish has a suffix (-(y)ip) to glue both verbs to treat
them as if they were one.
Bekle-y-ip gör = wait and see
The Turkish example is no different than any simple verb. It could be used
as if it were a simple verb stem.
Past Tense: "Bekleyip gör"dü (like "wait and see"d)
Present Tense: "Bekleyip gör"ür (like he "wait and see"s)
etc.
Number of verbs glued together can be more than 2.
Gid-ip al-Ip gel = go take come (meaning go there, take it and come back)
Here 2 intransitive and one transtive verb are glued together. So as a whole
it is a transtive verb. Interestingly, when there is an object it is used
this way:
Onu "gidip alIp gel" = like go-take-come it not go-take-it-come
It can be made passive.
O "gidip alIp gel"-in-ir-se = if somebody goes there, takes it and come
back. (I don't know how you could make it in passive voice. The English one
is in active voice though the meaning is passive)
It can even be far more complicated. Take the following example.
En: Get up early in the morning, have breakfast, get ready, take a taxi and
come to the office
Tr: Sabah erken kalkIp, kahvaltý edip, hazIrlanIp, taksi tutup, ofise gel
(=V)
OK, I will call that long sequence as V. You can use the V as if it were
one-syllable simple verb stem, in any grammatical form you can imagine. It
has no person, no voice, no tense suffix.When you add a tense suffix to it,
it is distributive (unlike English), so is when you add a personal ending.
You can make it a noun, an adjective, an adverb by adding the relevant
suffixes.
Past tense: V-di (Replace V with what it is above)
In English: He got up early in the morning, had breakfast, got ready, took a
taxi and came to the office.
Aorist tense V-ir
In English: He gets up early in the morning, has breakfast, gets ready,
takes a taxi and comes to the office.
Infinitive: V-mek
etc.
As in
(1+2+3+...)*x = 1*x + 2*x + 3*x + ...
Turkish really shines here!
> ah, this is a cool fact. (i agree that the example is odd as an
> instance of the WAIT AND SEE idiom.) this looks like the "inflection
> condition" that has been observed for the QSV construction and for the
> TRY AND V construction. the inflection condition requires the
> construction to occur only in the base-form (in imperatives, with
> modals, with infinitival TO, etc.) or in finite forms identical to the
> base form. if so, we'd predict that
> When they have to, they wait and see.
> is a lot better than
> When she has to, she waits and sees.
>
> i'm not entirely sure of my own judgments here. it's possible that
> what's at work here is not the inflection condition, but some slightly
> different one. maybe there are people who simply require that the
> idiom be in the base form; all of the OED's examples are in the base
> form.
>
> in any case, the past participle form sounds truly rotten to me:
> ??When they've had to, they've waited and seen.
> while the present participle form isn't so bad for me:
> ?Right now, they're waiting and seeing.
>
> >Hendiadys ought to show up as the inability to construct tenses, one
> >of the verbs being actually non-finite.
>
> well, this is something one needs to discover; it doesn't follow from
> putting the label "hendiadys" on some data. certainly, TRY AND V is
> perfectly happy in finite forms that are identical to the base form:
> When I have the time, I always try and calibrate things exactly.
> just as the QSV construction is:
> When I have the time, I go visit all my friends.
> but the Vmotion AND V construction ("Go and see who's at the door") --
> certainly something that is frequently labeled hendiadys -- isn't
> subject to the inflection condition at all:
> When she has the time, she goes and visits all her friends.
> When I had the time, I wen't and visited all my friends.
>
> >I don't know if ``wait to see'' is the correct original or not.
>
> as to "original": questions of historical origin can be surprisingly
> difficult to answer. in this case, examples like "wait, and see..."
> might well have served as the source of the more tightly bound "wait
> and see..." but i don't have evidence on the matter.
>
> as to "correct": the implication seems to be that WAIT AND SEE is
> somehow "incorrect". actually, usage manuals often object to TRY AND
> V and also to Vmotion AND V on the grounds that they involve a
> replacement of "correct" TO by "incorrect" AND; aside from their
> (possibly false, and certainly unproven) hypothesis about historical
> origins, these manuals seem to be taking the position that AND
> signifies *only* something like logical conjunction; any other
> use/meaning for AND is, *by definition*, illegitimate. but this
> claim about the semantics of AND is just raw unsubstantiated
> assertion. we're talking about a word of a particular language here,
> not a connective in a system of logic, and words of a particular
> language mean what speakers use them to mean. english AND has plenty
> of uses that have meanings other than (or in addition to) logical
> conjunction.
>
> arnold
>
>
>
>
>
>
.
- References:
- ``wait and see''
- From: Ron Hardin
- Re: ``wait and see''
- From: Arnold Zwicky
- ``wait and see''
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