When celebrated linguist Dr Sophia Lindstrom dies, her soul is brought to the Museum of Language, which displays everything she’s ever said, written or thought in her life. The exhibits are set out like concordances, each entry displayed in a different room. 

The first room showcases Give and its phrasal-verb variants. Give up, give in, give out, give over. The words have a power Sophia did not recognise when she was alive. A stream of fluid light flows from her. She is, quite literally, drained.

The Take exhibit is similarly exhausting. Take in, take over, take up, take on, take down, take after, take back. A sombre burden has been placed upon Sophia’s ethereal shoulders. A tyrant’s epaulettes.

She pulls herself from the room only to find the other exhibits have been cordoned off. The implication—that her life has been nothing more than give and take—is too distressing to contemplate.

A benevolent docent appears and leads Sophia to a quiet, spacious room, empty but for one word. Inhabit. The in sits more stably as prefix to the Latin-derived verb, Sophia observes, than as particle in the Old English equivalent, dwell in. She does not dwell on the implications—that phrasal verbs may contribute to the growing segmentalization of analytic languages. Instead she settles herself gently into the armchair that may have always been in this room and allows her newly dead self the exquisite pleasure of inhabiting the language of her life.

Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 103 of Structured Visions. You can also sign up to the Grammar for Dreamers newsletter to get monthly updates on the ideas that inspire my work.