Search results for 'tag:Constructions tag:Predicates' matching tags 'Constructions' and 'Predicates'

Re: passive voice

Huevos — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:22:52 GMT

Goodman
How would you classify this sentence then?

Goodman, your sentences are active voice. Their construction is: subject + linking verb (to be), + a noun phrase (predicate nominative). The passive voice, on the other hand, is formed thus: subject + verb to be + past participle of the lexical verb.

Re: Suggest + "not do" - verb pattern

YoungCalifornian — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:33:12 GMT

Tanit
But I'm stuck with a sentence where "to do" is replaced by "not to do":

    a1) I suggest not doing X.                         (I reckon this is fine)
    a2) I suggest not to do X.                          (???)
    b1) I suggest [that] Y shouldn't do X.         (I reckon this is fine)
    b2) I suggest [that] Y [not do | don't] X.      (this sounds terribly bad!)

Your questions stem from the use of the mandative subjunctive, which arises in turn from the use of the verb "to suggest." However, you've complicated things by using the complicated predicate "to do X" in your sentences' subordinate clauses. I'm assuming that "Y" always represents a personal pronoun (or proper noun), but "X" could be either a demonstrative pronoun (or regular noun in certain cases) or a verb depending on your meaning.

a1) This construction is fine if "X" is a demonstrative pronoun, but incorrect if represents a verb.

a2) This construction is incorrect. If "X" is a demonstrative pronoun, the verb "to do" must be changed from the infinitive to the subjunctive and a personal pronoun added so that the sentence reads I suggest Y not do X. This makes the subordinate clause a content clause, which means that the word "that" could be added as you've done in example b2). The sentence will not work at all if "X" is a verb.

b1) While this construction is not grammatically incorrect, it can sound too passive when "suggest" and "should" are in close proximity. Anyway, that's assuming that "X" is once again a demonstrative pronoun. This construction will not work if "X" is a verb.

b2) It may not seem like it, but switching between "not do" or "don't" (i.e. "do not" ) dramatically changes this sentence. They cannot be used interchangably in this context. As I mentioned above, the "not do" construction works fine if "X" is a demonstrative pronoun. However, if "X" is a (subjunctive) verb then "do not" or "don't" (or does not/doesn't for singular third person pronouns) must be used.

I apologize if this sounds complicated, but it's a result of using an auxiliary verb in your example predicates. If you replace "to do X" with a simpler verb it would probably be clearer. Basically, your two options are to follow the verb "to suggest" with either a gerund or the subjunctive. Either way, the word "not" would precede the dependent verb should you choose to make it negative. Looking ahead, I've used the verb "to interview" in an example of each construction.

Gerund: I suggest (not) interviewing...
Subjunctive: I suggest (that) he (not) interview...

Here's the sentence I'm trying to write (it's for a research paper):

1. "Issues of availability, together with constraints on time and scope of the research, suggested not interviewing any member of the scientific committee."
2. "Issues of availability, together with constraints on time and scope of the research, suggested not to interview any member of the scientific committee."
3. "Issues of availability, together with constraints on time and scope of the research, suggested that no member of the scientific committee should be interviewed."

I'd go for no. 1 (no. 3 seems to carry a different meaning ... or am I wrong?), but I am not sure about that. What do you think?
I'm also trying (with little, if any, success) to work out the general pattern.

Both the first and third examples work. The first is the gerund construction, the third is the subjunctive construction. The second is incorrect. However, despite being technically correct, both the first and third examples still sound awkward. Ultimately, I think this is because it sounds strange for "issues" to suggest something directly. Typically they would suggest something to someone. For instance, I think that "Issues of availability... suggest not interviewing any member of the scientific committee to me" or "Issues of availability... suggest to me that no member of the scientific committee should be interviewed" both sound better.

Re: The verb complement in "John tends to get hungry."

ouyang — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:57:44 GMT

I think it would be useful for students to understand how these constructions relate to simpler sentence patterns, but I haven't found a rationale for classifying them. As I said, other substitutions imply that my last examples are predicate adjectives, e.g. "He seems to be the owner." -> "He seems in charge." Regardless, the verb definitely appears to be linking the phrase to the subject. However, in a sentence like "He seems to have fixed the TV." the verbal phrase doesn't appear to be a subject complement. I wouldn't call it an adjective or a noun phrase. That's why I find the verb-verbal complement concept intriguing. It would simplify the analysis to say that "seems" and "to have fixed" combine to form a transitive verb phrase that takes "the TV" as its object, giving this sentence a S-V-Object pattern. If the same principle is applied to all infinitives that follow "seem" and "appear", then the infinitive would determine whether the resulting verb phrase was intransitive or transitive.

Re: what are the difference??

Ruslana — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:02:13 GMT

poci_wasiats
1) the new approach is providing information
2) the new approach is to provide information

They may mean the same thing. The difference would just be in the predicate.

1) The new approach is providing [the predicate is composed of the linking verb "to be" and the gerund "providing"] information.

2) The new approach is to provide [the predicate is composed of the linking verb "to be" and the infinitive "to provide"] information.

Here is another example of the same construction:

1) Her greatest pleasure is travelling. (It doesn't mean that we have a travelling pleasure but that travelling is her pleasure.)

2) Her greatest pleasure is to travel. (To travel is her pleasure.)

Re: whats a complete predicate??

Mister Micawber — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:00:46 GMT

.
A complete predicate is all of the sentence except for the subject.

An appositive is 'an expression that has 'the same function and the same relation to other elements in the sentence [as a previous noun], the second expression identifying or supplementing the first. In Washington, our first president, the phrase our first president is in apposition with Washington.'

Absolute (besides being a kind of vodka) probably refers to absolute construction, a phrasal structure somewhat like an appositive, in that it has no grammatical connection to the rest of the sentence: The day being sunny, we decided to go on a picnic.

A non-clause (not a term I am familiar with) appears to be any phrase or nonfinite clause that is not a finite clause. I found these examples on the Web:

Clauses	Non-Clauses
.
I went home	Going home
Because I went home	Alone and depressed
She is pretty	Becoming pretty
If she skips the appointment	Skipping the appointment
The boy hit the ball	Light weight and fluffy
While the parents cheered	Cheering parents
She laughed	The homework done
That he was wrong	On the table
Who wore the hat	Absent from class
Which we respected	The president of the club
Where the boys found the missing glove	One of the most admired members of the class

Re: Transformational Rules and Subject-Verb Agreement

miriam — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:01:07 GMT

In response to the questions posed in the first post of this thread, "the officer" is NOT the subject of the sentence regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive. "The officer" is undoubtedly the doer of the action in both sentences, but it is the subject only in the sentence with the active verb.

In the sentence with the passive verb, it can only appear in the predicate as "agent". It is still the doer of the action but no longer the subject of the sentence.

The subject, in a sentence with a monotransitive verb such as "capture" is always the "receiver" or "undergoer" of the action, and it will change from subject to direct object in an active sentence.

If we have a look at the post before mine, we will see "The officer has been captured by the subjects", which is untrue if we consider the sentences in the first post correct. The subjects have been captured, not the officer.

"The subjects" is not only the grammatical or formal subject of the passive verb, it is also the notional subject or whatever other name you might wish to call it. The subject of a sentence is not necessarily the doer of the action, and that fact doesn't make the subject in question any less "logical" than it should be. Actually, it'd be illogical to make "the officer" the subject of the passive verb if what you mean is precisely the opposite.

The officer, whether as agent or subject (from a syntactic point of view) will always be the "agent" of both sentences, the active and the passive, from a different perspective, from that of thematic roles. Perhaps analysing the sentence in terms of thematic roles will help you see the diferences between active and passive constructions more clearly. In this type of analysis, the agent (not a syntactic function) is the doer of the action regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive and also regardless of the position the construction occupies in the sentence. The direct object of an active sentence, and the subject of that sentence in the passive voice, are called "patient" if a living entity, and "theme" if it's a non-living entity. Again in this case, it shows that places are not always what define a function.

Leaving that aside and coming back to transformational grammar, Chomsky and his theories aren't the easiest to understand. But it is important to remember that an active sentence and a passive one require different mental processes and that, according to Chomsky, when you think of a sentence there are choices you must make before actually coming up with an utterance. One of those choices has to do with the sentence being active or passive. If you decide on a passive sentence, that will dictate a number of sub-processes needed in order to make adjustments to produce a grammatical sentence. Chomsky says that the choices concerning a sentence in the passive voice are made at the very beginning, at the moment you decide your sentence will be in the passive voice instead of the active. All this usually happens without us being aware of our own mental processes, but it seems we make decisions such as subject-verb agreement the very moment we decide what type of sentence we wish to produce. In his first book (Syntactic Structures, 1957, Chomsky made the rules for the passive voice appear as "optional". Later, in 1965, when he was already closer to becoming a rationalist or mentalist, and farther away from structuralism, he saw that the rule couldn't possibly be optional and that they should appear at the level of the phrase structure rules; in other words, before the "transformational" stage.

I hope this makes sense. I tried to put it in very few words, but I'm not sure it was a good idea.

Miriam

Re: forms of "be"

Mister Micawber — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:51:11 GMT

The uses of be are numerous, Sunilghai:

âverb (used without object)

1.	to exist or live: Shakespeare's âTo be or not to beâ is the ultimate question.

2.	to take place; happen; occur: The wedding was last week.

3.	to occupy a place or position: The book is on the table.

4.	to continue or remain as before: Let things be.

5.	to belong; attend; befall: May good fortune be with you.

6.	(used as a copula to connect the subject with its predicate adjective, or predicate nominative, in order to describe, identify, or amplify the subject): Martha is tall. John is president. This is she.

7.	(used as a copula to introduce or form interrogative or imperative sentences): Is that right? Be quiet! Don't be facetious.

âauxiliary verb

8.	(used with the present participle of another verb to form the progressive tense): I am waiting.

9.	(used with the present participle or infinitive of the principal verb to indicate future action): She is visiting there next week. He is to see me today.

10.

(used with the past participle of another verb to form the passive voice): The date was fixed. It must be done.

11.

(used in archaic or literary constructions with some intransitive verbs to form the perfect tense): He is come. Agamemnon to the wars is gone.

Re: breaking the double predicate "rule"

Grammar Geek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:25:21 GMT

In similar constructions, I think it helps make it clear that "I heard" and " thought" is the intended meaning, rather than "you were... and [you] thought"

But in this case, "you thought that you might sent..." doesn't make sense, so it's clear that it's I heard and I thought.

Re: The infinitive "to be"

CalifJim — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:34:32 GMT

Your questions reveal the limitations of the traditional technical vocabulary for discussing grammatical structures!

You can think of infinitives as a direct objects of the verb want.
On the other hand, want takes a clause as its complement.

I want (He helps us).

But the complement clause is expressed with an infinitive. He helps us >> him to help us.
The final, correct form of I want (He helps us) is I want him to help us.

When the subject of want is the same as the subject of the complement clause, the subject in the complement clause is deleted:

I want (I am a doctor) >> I want me to be a doctor >> I want me to be a doctor >> I want to be a doctor.

In the same way:

She wants (She is happy) >> She wants her to be happy >> She wants ~~her~~ to be happy. >> She wants to be happy.

In the first of these a doctor is a predicate noun/nominative, as you say. And in the second, happy is a predicate adjective, as you say.
___________

The other pattern is quite different. is/are/was/were to be is a semi-modal construction with an idiomatic meaning. The whole pattern (in brackets below) can be analyzed as a verb phrase.

She [is to be] a doctor.

CJ

Re: Correct order in which to parse a verb?

Garnett — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 14:29:51 GMT

Mister Micawber wrote:

Future Simple (I will sit)
Future Continuous/Progressive (I will be sitting)
Future Perfect (I will have sat")
Present Simple (I sit)
Past Simple (I sat)
Past Continuous/Progressive (I was sitting)
Past Perfect (I had sat)
Past Perfect Continuous/Progressive (I had been sitting)

Any I've missed? -- See VERB FORMS

Also can you hjelp me with Moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative. -- See VERB MOODS

In Latin you use the Jussive Subjuntive for sentences like "Let them eat cake", or "Let's go to the park". What is this construction in English? This is a causative imperative (I think).

Awesome. Thanks for those references.

Mister Micawber wrote:
"The bus stop was situated outside the airport - 3rd person singular, passive (or more probably active with the linking verb be and a predicate adjective), indicative." Are you parsing "be" here, then? -- Yes

Cool. That's what I thought.

Mister Micawber wrote:
Just because "situated" is being used as a participle adjective here, doesn't mean it can't be parsed like any other verb. It is a PPP isn't it - past passive participle? -- Not if it is an adjective.

I disagree.

In "the flying machine", "flying" can be parsed (at least partially) - Active present participle.

Participle Adjective: "A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective, as the past participle baked in We had some baked beans, and is used with an auxiliary verb to indicate tense, aspect, or voice, as the past participle baked in the passive sentence The beans were baked too long." ~ from Dictionary.com.

Is it a verb being used as an Adjective, or an out-and-out adjective? Frfom the definition above I would argue the former.

Mister Micawber wrote:
Don't confuse form and function. It is wisest to call it simply an -ed verb form

I think that's the crux.

Have you sen my thread here?

What are your thoughts?

I believe "stood" can replace "situated" in the sentence "I was situated at the bus stop".

"Situated" is defined in the dictionary as an adjective in its own right. "Stood" is not.

It appears then, to hinge on whether "situated" is a adjective "with the linking verb be and a predicate adjective" or whether it is a "participle adjective" that could be replaced by any other participle adjective like "stood"...