>appeals to tense don't always settle disputes about meaning

Diana,

Now that Jerry has twice corrected your claims about Greek tenses, you
say that appeals to tense don't always settle disputes, but you are
the one who has been making such appeals - and erroneous ones at that.
You say "Us he devours" is the progressive present tense, which it's
not. The progressive present in English requires an "ing" verb. (Jerry
gave "I am touching" as an example, but you apparently paid no
attention to that part of his post.) "Us he devours" is no more the
progressive present than are the negative commands "don't touch me" or
"don't hold me" or "don't cling to me." If you want to interpret those
as continuing actions, that's fine, but please stop using labels you
don't understand. (You did this before in your syntactical misreading
of the poem's title, about which Nancy's efforts to correct your error
seem to have made no impression.) I'll file your current "appeals to
tense don't always settle disputes about meaning" with your previous
"this tense can radically change meaning" (Sun, March 7, 2010).

Terry