Fw: "Direct Descendant"

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Leo van de Pas

Fw: "Direct Descendant"

Legg inn av Leo van de Pas » 20 mar 2005 20:21:02

Original I thought this message was sent to me only. I am very disappointed
in John Steele Gordon to make this silly attack in public.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leo van de Pas" <leovdpas@netspeed.com.au>
To: "John Steele Gordon" <ancestry@optonline.net>
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 6:13 AM
Subject: Re: "Direct Descendant"


Dear John
You disappoint me, see below.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Steele Gordon" <ancestry@optonline.net
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 1:23 AM
Subject: Re: "Direct Descendant"
Leo:

You are not ordinarily an arrogant man, but I have seldom read so
intellectually arrogant a post.

I must have missed the announcement. When were you declared to be the
sole
arbiter of the English language, empowered to unilaterally declare the
meanings of all words and phrases, regardless of what other, and far
more
competent, authorities state? That is exactly what you are doing.
===The above is emotional, I do not see that I am an arbiter of any kind.

I
try to apply the English language and thank goodness American Gordon Hale
agrees with me.
The OED--by orders of magnitude the greatest work of lexicography the
world
has ever seen--defines "collateral ancestor" as "a brother or sister of
a
parent,
grandparent, or other lineal ancestor." Every dictionary I own--and that
is
quite a few: I, unlike you, am in the language business, after
all--agrees
with the OED.

But Leo van de Pas, whose native language is Dutch and who has no
credentials whatever in linguistics, has decided that it means something
else: "a person from whom two (or more) people are descended." That is
what
the other billion speakers of English call a common ancestor.

Collateral ancestor is a brother or sister of a parent etc.

I say that if two people are of collateral (side by side, running
parallel)
connection they have a common ancestor. You mean to say a Collateral
ancestor is a brother or sister of a parent does not have a common ancestor
with the person you talk about? Is it not six of one or half- a-dozen of
the
other?
The OED defines the adjective "direct" in this context as, "Proceeding
in
an
unbroken line from father to son, or the converse; lineal as opposed to
collateral, as a direct heir or ancestor."
=====This is new, this is what I have been saying all the time, Direct

Ancestor/descendant is an ancestor or descendant in the male line. Goodness
you find something that agrees with me, nothing less than the OED!!!!

Merriam-Webster's Third
Unabridged--and every other dictionary--agrees: "Being or passing in a
straight line of descent from parent to offspring: lineal <only a
collateral
relative, not his direct ancestor>."

But Leo van de Pas has decided "direct ancestor" means nothing at all,
that
it is a mere redundancy that should be, and by his decree is, banished
from
the language.
=====If you read my message properly you would see that ancestor and

descendant are perfectly adequate words. If you add a word that word has to
add value to the description. If direct ancestor/descendant means in a
direct male line, I am all for it, but many people say that this is not
what
it means. They maintain direct ancestor or descendant allows female links
in the chain.

The fact that writers of the stature of Anthony Powell use the words in
the
sense given by the OED matters not at all to the self-declared Pope of
the
English language.

Leo, Hines is impervious to any logic but his own, but one such damn
fool
is enough per newsgroup. Try to understand my point of view before
responding. I see no evidence whatever that you have undertaken that
task
as
yet. You merely keep reiterating what you would wish to be the case.
=== I hope you have realised I am ignoring Hines. I had hoped you had

realised that I am trying to learn and by defending my understanding (even
Peter de Loriol in England agrees with me) counter arguments can be made I
am not standing on a pullpit preaching to the unwilling to see that a word
means what a word means.

Leo

>

John Steele Gordon

Re: "Direct Descendant"

Legg inn av John Steele Gordon » 20 mar 2005 22:31:07

""Leo van de Pas"" <leovdpas@netspeed.com.au> wrote in message
news:002401c52d82$07a242c0$c3b4fea9@email...
Original I thought this message was sent to me only. I am very
disappointed
in John Steele Gordon to make this silly attack in public.

I'm sorry, Leo, I meant no offense, but I do think you are being
intellectually arrogant here.

===The above is emotional, I do not see that I am an arbiter of any kind.

Then why are you declaring the meanings of phrases to be other than what the
OED says that they mean? The OED can be wrong (I even found an error once
myself--a red letter day) but the burden of proof is on you.

Collateral ancestor is a brother or sister of a parent etc.
I say that if two people are of collateral (side by side, running
parallel)
connection they have a common ancestor.

What you wrote was that a collateral ancestor was "a person from whom two
(or more) people are descended." That is not the same thing. You can have a
collateral descent from, say, George Washington, but no cousins who are
descended from him, because no one IS descended from him.

The OED defines the adjective "direct" in this context as, "Proceeding
in an unbroken line from father to son, or the converse; lineal as opposed
to
collateral, as a direct heir or ancestor."
=====This is new, this is what I have been saying all the time, Direct
Ancestor/descendant is an ancestor or descendant in the male line.
Goodness
you find something that agrees with me, nothing less than the OED!!!!

In this case the OED, I'm afraid, is not agreeing with you, it is using
"from father to son" in the now old-fashioned sense, where "the male
embraces the female." (This is much clearer in Spanish, for instance, where
the word for "parents" is "padres.") The usage was fading a hundred years
ago, when the OED was put together, and is now mostly extinct in English. If
the OED meant male line descent, than "lineal descent" would mean agnatic,
which, as far as I know, no one argues for.

=====If you read my message properly you would see that ancestor and
descendant are perfectly adequate words. If you add a word that word has
to
add value to the description.

Indeed it does, see my post to Gordon Hale, however, for an instance where
"direct" DOES add value.

If direct ancestor/descendant means in a
direct male line, I am all for it, but many people say that this is not
what
it means. They maintain direct ancestor or descendant allows female links
in the chain.

I think "direct" here is a synonym for "lineal." A strict male line descent
should be described as "agnatic," I think, to avoid any lack of clarity as
to meaning.

I had hoped you had
realised that I am trying to learn and by defending my understanding (even
Peter de Loriol in England agrees with me) counter arguments can be made I
am not standing on a pullpit preaching to the unwilling to see that a word
means what a word means.

But when you argue that the OED is wrong and you are right, because you have
"logic" on your side, you are not defending your understanding, you are
declaring yourself to be the fount of authority. I am sure you are trying to
learn, but you can only do that not by defending your understanding but by
understanding what the other person is saying. What I am saying is that
there is a lot more to good writing, and to language as a whole, than logic.
You seem unwilling to admit that or even to notice that I have so stated.
You are not addressing my argument, you are reiterating your own.

JSG

Peter Stewart

Re: "Direct Descendant"

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 21 mar 2005 00:21:44

John Steele Gordon wrote:

Leo van de Pas"" <leovd...@netspeed.com.au> wrote in message
news:002401c52d82$07a242c0$c3b4fea9@email...
Original I thought this message was sent to me only. I am very
disappointed in John Steele Gordon to make this silly attack in
public.

I'm sorry, Leo, I meant no offense, but I do think you are being
intellectually arrogant here.

<chomp>

What I am saying is that there is a lot more to good writing, and
to language as a whole, than logic. You seem unwilling to admit
that or even to notice that I have so stated. You are not
addressing my argument, you are reiterating your own.

The two (or more) sides in this debate are at cross-purposes: Leo is
arguing the case for "ancestor" and "descendant" as he sees these terms
being now - or at least in the process of becoming - technical terms in
genealogy; whereas John is stating the undeniable - and certainly
undenied - case for what in his view remains their looser meaning in
general usage.

Logic, however, has been invoked rather loosely. There is nothing at
all illogical about "direct" and "collateral" applied to an ancestor,
or to a descendant for that matter since this word is used in parallel.
Nothing in either "ancestor" or "descendant" restricts their use to a
progenitor or to the issue of his/her body - nothing in either word
implies a genetic contribution to an individual or derivation from one.

"Ancestor" comes from a vernacular form (in medieval French "ancestre")
of the Latin "antecessor", meaning literally a forerunner, one who goes
before ("ante" + "cedere"). In Roman military jargon this term was used
for an advance guard. In modern English, as written by a great master,
if can mean any member of a previous generation in the family, as when
PG Wodehouse makes Bertie Wooster call his dragon aunt Agatha "old
ancestor", even to her face.

Equally, "descendant" can mean anyone later in order of birth to whom
name or property belonging to an ancestor might "descend".

Writers of English used to be more familiar with the origin of such
words than they are today, and Leo may be right in supposing that the
modern popularity of genealogy will eventually lead to a purely
technical understanding of the terms along the lines he has argued. If
so, this will be one step further removed from the basic logic of
etymology.

But, as John has shown from the OED, this has not happened yet.

And by the way, there definitely ARE such things as "tidal" waves -
people can even surf these UP rivers, in particular the Amazon, running
at considerable height and speed - although the phenomenon is of course
different from what is now termed a "tsunami".

Peter Stewart

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