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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (3189)	7/18/1999 11:36:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

I can see the logic of your position, E. But usage is not necessarily logical. Why one preposition and not another follows a noun or a verb, or why any preposition at all rather than none follows a noun or a verb, often makes no logical sense. That is true of any language that I know, not just English. In French, for example, why are some verbs followed by a', and others by de? There's no rhyme or reason to it: you just have to memorize which verbs take what. Those examples cited in the unabridged Webster's used "animus" in the sense of "animosity." (The use of it in the first sense is quite rare.) They followed the word with the preposition "against." However that may offend your sense of logic, that is just the way it is. Animosity "toward," animus "against," even when those two words are used as synonyms. Do you have any source that specifies that some other preposition -- "toward", for example -- must be used after "animus"? As I said, I am open to persuasion -- if you can cite a source. As for your punctuation, yes, it is the commas. Should be as follows: Animus is always "against" (unless you're speaking Latin), so the correct.... Joan