Re: Genealogy of Scaly Reptiles Rewritten by New Research

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On 11/26/05, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
>
> Really? I mean, the paper says so, but doesn't "epi-" mean "above"?

More like "after" as in "epilogue" ("afterword") or "Epimetheus"
("Afterthought", the less visionary brother of Prometheus
["Forethought"]).

But unless being used for very basic spatial relations, any use of a
preposition (or postposition, depending on the language) is
essentially a metaphor, and so they often do not translate well
between different languages, even related ones. When using the
telephone, we English speakers call someone "up" while German speakers
call "on" them ("anrufen"). (And then my favorite is Dutch, where they
would "bell hem op".) We go "to" college or "to" our parents' home,
while a German speaker goes "on" the university ("an") and "by" their
parents' home ("bei"). Etc., usw., and so on.

Errr, um ... dinosaurs!
--
Mike Keesey
The Dinosauricon: http://dino.lm.com
Parry & Carney: http://parryandcarney.com