Lost World: Extracts from the Professor's Diary. Saurions we did not call dragon §1, the Pterosaurs

[jack]

...of all the saurions we ever dubbed "dragon" in some ways the pteranodon was the most appropriate, but the name felt wrong as soon as we used it. As much as the smaller pterosaurs the pteranodon was elegant, and they were all flying lizards really quite large enough to be impressive close to. But none had the majesty or the anger one imagines of a dragon.

Until the end we saw only a few pterosaurs and even the pteranodons seemed to acquiesce to the more forceful land based saurians, content to soar above us and observe, but even in the worst mêlée never became tempted to close with us...

...skimming over the lake, scooping vast fish from the shoals just below the water, the first time we saw any flying saurians in anything approaching a frenzy, but little did we...

...around the volcano, specks of black silhouette wheeling across the dark, fiery sky[1]. By now human and saurian alike could sense things coming apart, and Yeats' poem was high in all our minds. The souls impressed into saurian bodies were starting to dissociate: the pterosaurs had lost their placidity and screamed their despair through the ash, occasionally one maddened creature diving upon our baulking mounts. The soul of the true demon...

...nothing that came in such numbers or moved so lightly in the sky could claim the name dragon, though we all had a certain affection for them. We seemed determined to fit the name to one of the species we saw and other dinosaurs fit a dragon attitude better, even if none had the airborne tonnage the western idea of dragons evoked...

[1] It draws together a lot of clichés, and probably doesn't work for anyone else, as I can't quite capture the feel and haven't given a full outline of the metaphysics of the journey, but the image behind this paragraph was one of the few I've written which have given me shivers.

Comments

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I don't know. Maybe we need to find a representative sample of greengrocers.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OK, to be honest I think it must be related. I like to imagine that I may be sloppy but at least amn't ignorant. However

(a) I don't know if that's actually superior in any way at all
(b) Nor if there is any recognisable qualitative partition between the two.

I don't know if you are more put out by that mistake than you would be by a random spelling or typographical mistake? Obviously I know where apostrophes ought to go when I think about it and some people don't.

However, I don't think I ever misplace an apostrophe before a different terminal letter, so obviously some level of my brain knows how to spell other words better than it knows how to spell words with 's's at the end.

And I don't know if persistent non-traditional apostrophe placement is an extrapolation of that or something different...

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I'd guess that a termination in -'s is just so common in English genitives that it is very easy to type it without much of a thought process coming into it at all.

Also, surely Yeat's isn't the greengrocer mistake at all? I thought what greengrocers did was to insert an apostrophe into a *plural* (cabbage's only 50p each!). Which doesn't quite seem analogous with Yeat's...

By the way, do you favour Yeats' over Yeats's?

OOI, what would you *say*? Would it sound like the base form of Yeats, or would it be Yeats + [iz] (as in horses)?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I thought what greengrocers did was to insert an apostrophe into a *plural* (cabbage's only 50p each!). Which doesn't quite seem analogous with Yeat's...

That's exactly what I was thinking about -- that's a clearly defined and different grammatical mistake. But I wasn't sure if generalising to put an apostrophe before *every* "s" was a generalisation of that, or not...

By the way, do you favour Yeats' over Yeats's?

I think in order of preference:

1. Being consistent
2. Yeats'
3. Yeats's (But preferred to (2) sometimes)

But I don't really mind either way -- I think either is fine grammatically, so I have a slight aesthetic preference, but people who disagree aren't *wrong*.

I think you in general pronounce it like horses. (I'm not positive.) But that might be a good point -- I think possibly this time I heard "Yeats" in my head, which is why it got transcribed "'s"

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I favour 2, and whether I pronounce it as-in-horses or not would not, I expect, be consistent, though it feels like it would follow consistent principles the which I'm just not able to put my finger on at the moment.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

(Is the icon for "writing" or for "wilde horses"? :) Either way :))

it feels like it would follow consistent principles the which I'm just not able to put my finger on at the moment.

:) (Did you mean, the way you pronounce it would be always constant, or would be consistent with the way you spell it?)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Extra apostrophes in -s seems to be very common (i.e. extra compared to what is typically taught in school English lessons) - I speculate that the apostrophe is in the process of turning into a general “here comes a suffix” marker. Personally, if it's going to lose most its meaning, I'd rather do away with it altogether...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think becoming a "here comes an s-suffix" marker is definitely what happens, I can see why it would. But here the point seems to be has it seemed to become a "here comes an 's' at all" marker! And is that a generalisation of the "s-suffix" usage, or a completely different mistake made for related reasons?

Personally, if it's going to lose most its meaning, I'd rather do away with it altogether...

I know what you mean, although a "here is a suffix" marker seems a reasonable thing to have, I wouldn't object per se.