Rather than he do it

I'm afraid that Tom and Bill sound as strange to me as Joan and the unknown interlocutor.

But following on from Komountain's previous comment about parallelism:

1. I prefer to | wait | rather than | go.

— Parallel: the emboldened verbs both relate to the same subject.

2. I prefer to | do it myself | rather than | ask Joan (to do it).

— Parallel: as #1.

3. I prefer to | do it myself | rather than | have Joan do it.

— Parallel: again, as #1.

4. I prefer to ask | him | rather than | her.

— Parallel: the emboldened (object) pronouns bear the same relation to the same verb.

5. I prefer | to do it myself | rather than | Joan do it. ("do" = bare infinitive)

— Not parallel: first "object" of "prefer" is a verb phrase, the second a noun phrase. The first "do" relates to a subject; the second to an object.

6. I prefer | to do it myself | rather than | that Joan (should) do it.

— Not parallel: the first "object" of "prefer" is an infinitive phrase; the second, a "that" clause.

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1-4 seem fine to me. 5 is distinctly odd. 6 is odd too, but less so than 5.

I'd be interested to see #5 translated into other languages. Could we retain the structure, I wonder?

MrP

Dear friends,

It is a curious construction. We may say that «rather than» is flanked with two choices. «Prefer», however, implies a choice also.

I do not therefore believe that «prefer» may participate in the choices that flank «rather than».

Kind regards,

Goldmund

Hello Miriam

Thank you for the reply. As for the first part of your explanation, I well know that usage of bare infinitives. But it is a bit away from what I meant by "a bare infinitive with a subject". In those sentences you presented (causative and perceptive constructions), the NP in the objective phrase of <NP + a bare infinitive> is merely in a semantic subject of the verb in the infinitive form and therefore the NP must be in an objective case. For example, you can say "I heard Tom whisper ugly things to Mary", but you cannot say "I heard he whisper ugly things to Mary". On the other hand, in the case of "rather than" constructs, the NP stands in a nominative case and we can say like "Rather than she do it, I prefer to do it myself". I think this "bare infinitive with a subject" is quite different from those you mentioned.

The concern of ours is whether so-called "a bare infinitive with a subject" that Professor Svartvik uses in the explanation of "rather than Joan do it" is identical to a present subjunctive construct or not. My answer is YES. As you told, somehow, there is a tendency in English that a word like "rather", "sooner", or "better" induces a present subjunctive. I have learned that the tendency comes from an impersonal dative construct of Old English like "Him wære betere þat he næfre geboren nære" (Him were better that he never born not be).

Hello again, Paco. Sorry my answer to your question was not what you were looking for. Your question was “could you give me any other types of sentences where 'a bare infinitive clause with a subject' is used?” Even when they were not the type of examples you were expecting, I posted, precisely, bare-infinitive clasues with subject. In the examples I provided, the subjects are more than “merely semantic subjects”. You see, since the main verbs in the clauses are not conjugated, which we might call an oddity, the subjects are sort of odd as well. In syntactic analysis, those objective pronouns are still the rightful subjects.

Anyway, and moving on to your question about the subjunctive, I agree that constructions of the type “Rather than she do it” look similar to the present subjenctive. I have not seen those examples in any grammar book in the “subjunctive” section so far, though. In my first language -Spanish- we use the subjunctive in such structures; perhaps that is what leads me to think that your examples are very close to -I cannot be sure they actually are- the present subjunctive in English.

I hope this makes sense.

Miriam