Devon McCormick wrote: |Not to continue to push this discussion entirely off the rails...
Continuing in Devon's vein, the "-ly" suffix nearly always indicates an adverb, which (in English, not J) can modify either a verb or an adjective, usually indicating how or to what degree. Thus, "equal-size" refers to the fact/attribute that the sizes are equal, whereas "equally-sized" (although also referring to the fact that the sizes are equal) implies that there was a process (verb) that made the sizes equal. The former is an attribute of the thing itself, whereas the latter refers to how it got that way. The difference is subtle, and, seeing how language is rapidly dumbing down these days, it may make no difference whatsoever in another 10-15 years. And, touching on Henry's comment, I agree--it irks me no end that most people in radio, TV, etc. (who ought to know better, and who at least used to have network pronunciation standards) mispronounce "short-lived". What I find ironic is that they pronounce the related word correctly: "Live... from New York... it's Saturday night!" Another irk: 2008 is a year (twenty-oh-eight), not a number (two thousand eight). I won't say any more OT. Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
