Search results for 'tag:Direct objects tag:Past tenses' matching tags 'Direct objects' and 'Past tenses'

Re: wife/girlfriend...advance/further

Dawnstorm — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:45:56 GMT

Grammar Geek
I think Nona's example about talking about your mother when she was a child and still referring to her as your mother is a good analogy.

First,. let me say that I agree usage-wise Nona and you. I also think that the mother-example is a good one - but it's not a perfect one.

It's a good one, because it demonstrates the difference between the time of action and the time of speaking. Noun references are routinely rooted in the present, even in past tense senteces, and the mother-example demonstrates that.

But there is a cognitive difference in "married his wife", as there is a semantic relationship between the verb "marry" and the noun "wife", in so far as the act of marrying results in wife-status. So it's quite possible that individual speakers (native speakers, even) have an intuitive correctness condition that doesn't allow the word "wife" as the object of the verb "marry", quite independent of tense. To summarise, I think part of the argument is lexical: what sort of words can the verb "marry" select as direct objects?

The thing is, disliking "wife" as the direct object of "marry" is reasonable. It's somewhat similar to "The Queen knighted the knight." (but without the etymological close relation that adds to the oddness). Or, "The army conscripted the soldier." Or "The jury pronounced the prisoner guilty."

It's an interesting discussion, really. Since "married his wife" doesn't sound odd to me at all (I'm not a native speaker), and since native speakers agree, I wonder why the tense relation between verb and noun-naming can override nosensical direct-object relation. (I do think it's a disjunction between the time-levels that's at issue here; the noun-reference is firmly in the present - referring to a specific person.)

Re: Lie lay

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:51:34 GMT

Hi Mr Liat,

Yoong Liat
Please note that the past tense of lie is lay. (lie, lay, lain).

I know. In reply to the following post

julielai
I lie in bed. (present tense)
I lay myself in bed. (present tense)
Right??

CalifJim wrote

CalifJim
I believe we'd have to say yes! "myself" becomes the direct object, so "lay" is used. The reflexive use is not so common, however, as other uses ...

I said earlier that the presence of "myself" in "I lay myself in bed" makes the verb transitive. Hence, "lay" here is the present tense of lay (laid, laid) and NOT the past of lie (lay, lain) because the latter is intransitive and cannot take any direct object. I also repeated what CalifJim had already written, that is that lay (and I mean lay, laid, laid) is generally not used as a reflexive verb.

If you take "myself" out, then it obviously becomes a past tense (lie, lay, lain is intransitive), but that's another story.

Just to sum things up:

"I lie in bed": present simple, intransitive (lie, lay, lain)
"I lay in bed": past simple, intransitive (lie, lay, lain)
"I lay myself in bed": present simple, transitive (lay, laid, laid) (as I said, this sounds a bit odd to me, but I don't see why one should say it's ungrammatical).

Best.

why are these wrong?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:37:57 GMT

Hi there, I hope you can explain/tell the rule as to why these are wrong please:

If I will be rich, I would retire. should be
If I were rich, I would retire.

-the reasoning I came up with is can't use future tense (will be) here. Past tense can refer to future time.

She described me the picture. should be
She described the picture to me.

-I want to say the direct object goes before the indirect object, but that is not complete...

She met John and I in Montreal. should be
She met John and me in Montreal.

-an explination I found is if you take John out of the sentence, it would still read right (She met me in Montreal), but not if you take I out of the sentence.

Re: parsing

Englishuser — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:43:04 GMT

Hi Inchoateknowledge,

A finite clause is a clause that has either present/past tense or a modal verb. What he did has a past tense which means it is a finite clause.

An object complement, or object predicative, is a clause element that occurs after the direct object and characterises the object. Unforgettable in your sentence meets this criterion.

Source: Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, D. Biber, S. Conrad, G. Leech, Pearson Education Ltd., 2002

Re: Where is the direct object...

Randy_Tam — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:37:02 GMT

.... -0-

ok, let's put it this way: GB is nothing more than a module in the generative grammar, to be put on a par with such other modules of the theory as X', Case theory or the Theta Theory, although it has been quite incorrectly treated as though it were the whole of the Grammar (Chomsky, 1995b, p.30).

The sentence I believe can be interpreted this way:

1. There is an x such that x is subject to the action of 'training' such that x is intended to carry out the action of 'killing'.

Where X = the agents

According to the generative grammar, this clause involves, as usual, quite complicated and interwoven elements in action: 1. ECM 2. Move A (Alpha...) 3. Passive morphology (EST)

(i) The agents are (for the sake of simplicity, I omit the irrelevant Past tense here) trained to kill

can be interpreted as having the underlying structure of:

(ii) e train [Passive+, Present, Agr pl+] TP[DP SPEC [the agents] T'[T[to] VP[V[kill]]]]

As passive morphology makes the Verb assign no theta role to the Subject, such a sentence as:

* The Agency are trained the agents to kill.

is ungrammatical. However, on the other hand, as the Projection Principle mandates that every Agr P must have a Subject, a construction like:

* e are trained the agents to kill.

is impossible as well. Therefore, Experiencer NP 'the agents' moves to fill the Subject role (note that expletives are used as a last resort ---> in its ordinary sense, bringing no syntactic import: if there is any candidate eligible for filling the Subject A position, then that candidate will be used instead of expletives, such that *there / it are trained the agents to kill is ungrammatical)

There's still the TP left to discussion: as there's no Agr present, the TP does not assign Case to its SPEC. It is the Verb 'train', which governs the TP, that assigns Accusative to that DP. (as governor governs SPEC of the branch as well)

Re: can you please help me?!?!

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 03:25:58 GMT

Hello
Not to be rude with you, rvw, I'd be inclined to think to the contrary. Shouldn't we take the noun phrase 'fringe benefits not French benefits' as a whole as an direct object..??

Because when we change similar sentence to the past tense and paraphrase,

[1] We ate ten apples not eleven.

[2] We ate ten apples, but we didn't eat eleven apples.

they look different. I'm not so sure, though. How do you think?

Re: to be parsed

MrPedantic — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 10:27:54 GMT

Hello K.O.

That looks good - here's a little more detail:

Clause 1

We - subject

were spared - passive voice, past tense

the storm's fury - noun phrase, object (the storm's - possessive; fury - direct object)

Clause 2

but - coordinating conjunction

now - adverb

are having - modal verb, present continuous

to deal with - phrasal verb (prepositional), to-infinitive

the refugees and the misery - two objects coordinated by 'and'

(I expect there are other ways of parsing it.)

The present continuous emphasises the fact that the action is taking place as the speaker utters the sentence.

MrP

Re: Correct a sentence (subjunctive) 2

MrPedantic — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:07:59 GMT

Hello Hela

I'm inclined to agree with CJ about your example 2:

'It's (high/about) time she WAS in bed'

seems the natural form, because you use this phrase when you have no doubt that the person should be in bed.

I agree too that the past tense here indicates: 'by this time, you should already be in bed'.

In the sentence "Give me a dollar", 'me' is an indirect object pronoun, as you can see if you rephrase it: 'give a dollar to me'. 'Dollar' is the object.

(I myself find it useful to think of the 'indirect object pronoun' as a 'dative'. Unfortunately, professional grammarians prescribe against this usage, and insist we say 'indirect object pronoun' instead. Pity. 15 extra letters to type.)

See you,
MrP