RE: QED - my last posting on this...honest

From: Peter Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 07:22:39 EST


OK, thanks Carl. I thought so. Because here in the UK there is a TV
programme which is called QED - an investigative documentary/science
programme. It has always seemed to be interpreted that what they are
investigating still has to be proven rather than as having been proved. So
the earlier posts about QED with erat and therefore pointing to what has
been shown seemed out of kilter.

Instead we have an ambiguity. The initials QED can either mean "what has
been shown" or "what is to be proved" or any combination thereof. And here
we are back in one of b-greek's perrenial discussions - ancient languages
and ambiguity. Everything comes around that goes around!

Pete Phillips

----------
From: Carl W. Conrad [SMTP:cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
Sent: 26 January 1998 11:30
To: Peter Phillips
Cc: p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk; 'Paul S. Dixon'; b-greek@virginia.edu
Subject: RE: QED

At 2:30 AM -0600 1/26/98, Peter Phillips wrote:
>Yes OK, bless Euclid. Yes, thankyou for the kind soul who shared the real
>meaning of quod and quid but my question remains - can you have a gerund
>with the present tense and if so why not here?

Yes, you can have a gerundive with a present tense: QUOD EST DEMONSTRANDUM
is perfectly good Latin for "what is to be shown/proven." But that's a
gerundive, not a gerund: gerundive is a verbal adjective, gerund a verbal
noun supplying the oblique cases of the infinitive and used only in very
restricted ways.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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