the Second Distinguishing Mark of Newspeak Grammar


WAS ITS REGULARITY

SUBJECT TO A FEW EXCEPTIONS
WHICH ARE MENTIONED BELOW, ALL INFLECTIONS FOLLOWED THE SAME RULES.
THUS, IN ALL VERBS THE PRETERITE AND THE PAST PARTICLE WERE THE SAME AND ENDED IN -ed! THE PRETERITE OF 'steal' WAS 'stealed', the PRETERITE of 'think' was 'thinked', and so on throughout the whole language, all such forms as 'swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by adding -s or -es as the case might be.
The plurals of 'man, ox, life', were 'mans, oxes, lifes'! Comparison of adjectives was invariable made
by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest), irregular forms and the more,
most formation being suppressed!

The only classes of words
that were still allowed to inflect irregularity were the pronouns,
the relatives, the demonstrative adjectives and the auxiliary verbs.

All of these followed their ancient usage, except that whom had been scrapped as unnecessary,
and the shall, should tenses had been dropped, all their uses being covered by will and would.

There were also certain irregularities in word formation arising out of the need for rapid and
easy speech. A word which was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard,
was held to be ipso facto a bad word: occasionally therefore, for the sake of euphony,
extra letters were inserted into a word or an archaic formation was retained.

But this need made itself felt chiefly in connection with the B-vocabulary.

WHY so great an importance was attached to ease pronunciation
might be made clear later
in this essay.
geschokt
10 mrt 2013 - bewerkt op 11 mrt 2013 - meld ongepast verhaal
Weet je zeker dat je dit verhaal wilt rapporteren? Ja | Nee
Profielfoto van Asih
Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
Log in om een reactie te plaatsen.   vorige volgende