I wanted to know that I was worth [the effort that it takes] driving 10 miles in the rain to get it.

It’s true that rewriting a passage can improve the grammar (e.g. ‘…the effort that it takes to drive 10 miles in the rain…’). And ‘taking liberties’ can indeed produce a new question. But I’m not convinced ‘it’s worth £10’ is the same as ‘it’s worth the effort of paying £10’.

To my mind, the writer of the original passage has confused two idioms:

1. It’s worth doing X to do Y.
‘It’s worth driving 10 miles in the rain to get a [piece of pie].’

2. X is worth doing Y for.
‘A piece of pie is worth driving 10 miles in the rain for.’
‘I was worth driving 10 miles in the rain for.’

Put them together and you get:

‘I was worth /driving 10 miles in the rain/ to get [a piece of pie].

i.e. there are now 3 terms in the equation.

To look at it another way: if we look back at the sentence to which the ‘it’ refers, we find that ‘it’ = ‘what I wanted’. The equation then consists of:

Term A: ‘I’
Term B: ‘driving 10 miles in the rain/ to get what I wanted’.

For the equation to make sense, we must be able to quantify how B differs from:

Term C: ‘driving 10 miles in the rain/ to get what I didn’t want’.
Term D: ‘driving 10 miles in the rain/ to get a new outfit’.
Term E: ‘driving 10 miles in the rain/ to post a question on English Forums’.

I'm not sure we can, unfortunately.

The significant action is ‘driving 10 miles in the rain’. If B ended where I’ve put the ‘/’, there wouldn’t be a problem. ‘I’ would then = ‘driving 10 miles in the rain.’

As it stands, the ‘to get it’ is a mistake: the writer has started in the groove of ‘I was worth X-ing for’, then jumped tracks at the gerund into the groove of ‘it’s worth doing X to do Y’.

MrP

Thank you in advance, MrP, Jim and JTT.

It seems like this thread is going a bit beyond my understanding. :( I wish to go back to the original point.

Anne, pleased to meet you.

X was worth Y. As in MrP's example, I was worth $10. So "I"="10".

X=I
Y=driving 10 miles in the rain to get a piece of lemon meringue pie.

How can X be equivalent to Y? There must be something missing. But later on, I read your another example, "I was worth [the effort that it takes] driving 10 miles in the rain to get a piece of lemon meringue pie," I don't think "I" is equivalent "the effort".


First, there is a mistaken assumption on Mr P's part that you can equate things in language in the manner that you equate things in mathematics. Language has its own set of logic and it isn't determined by the logic of math.

This is the same sort of ill-conceived thinking that got the PGs in so much trouble wrt double negatives. They erroneously extended concepts of math to language.

Language has many potential figurative meanings. "I gave her ..." isn't glossed by normal human beings as being equivalent to, "I actually picked her up and gave her", though that meaning could actually occur in life and language.

This example is no different than the other hundreds of 'figurative' meanings that could be misread by someone with too much time on his hands and too many trips to the parlor for sherry.

While this may be worthy of an inclusion in a grammar like Fowler's, it has no place in the study of language.

"A prescriptive grammar can be abused by those ... who try to tell others what a form ought to mean rather than the meaning understood in general usage." [The Grammar Book, pg 9]

By the same token, "A prescriptive grammarIAN can abuse ... "

I wanted to know that I was worth driving 10 miles in the rain to get a piece of lemon meringue pie. Once I did that, I know the pie was unimportant.

1. If someone else drove ten miles to get pie for you, then I wanted to know if I was worth the ten mile drive to get pie is fine. (Cf. You are worth it; X = Y) But given our context above, "I" is awkward. You did the driving.

2a. "not" is an adverb. It modifies verbs; it occurs after the auxiliary:

The pie was not important.

"not" negates the copular equation: X is Y becomes X is not Y.

2b. "un-" is an affix, notably a prefix, and it modifies adjectives:

The pie was unimportant.

"un-" negates the adjective: X is Y becomes X is unY.

The difference between 2a. and 2b. has to do with modification. "not" negates the verb, whereas "un-" in negating the subject complement, negates the subject, while the copular construct remains unchanged (i.e., is):

Max is unhealthy. (Max is this: unhealthy)
Max is not healthy. (That Max is healthy is false)

I remember reading the following on a Snoopy mug:
"I'm worth nothing before coffee break" (which is quite true).
It's in the same kind of line, isn't it?