A Dancing Dog

"My dog," Kenneth Burke writes, "is a dancer . . . in the surprising way he conjugates, let us say, the verb 'to eat.' For the present tense he uses, quite literally, the act of eating. But for the future tense, to say 'I will eat,' he sniffs at his plate, glances ill-naturedly at the cat, and salivates. And to express the perfect tense of this astoundingly irregular virb, to say 'I have eaten,' he picks himself a cool spot under the porch, curls up, and goes to sleep" ("The Dance: The 'Problems' of the Ballet." Nation 140 (March 1935): 343-44.)