Search results for 'tag:Direct objects tag:Universities' matching tags 'Direct objects' and 'Universities'

the original text

Teo — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 05:29:52 GMT

Another kind of illegitimate argument is based on analogy between one area of grammar and another. consider yet another construction where there is variation between nominative and accusative forms of pronouns:

[3] a. They invited me to lunch. b. %They invited my partner and I to lunch.

The <%> symbol is again used to mark the [3b] example as typically used by some speakers of Standard English but not by others, though this time it is not a matter of regional variation. The staus of the construction in [3b] differs from that of It's me, which is undisputably normal in informal use, and from that of !Me and Kim saw her leave, which is unquestionably non-standard. What is different is that examples like [3b] are regularly used by a significant proportion of speakers of Standard English, and not generally thought by ordinary speakers to be non-standard; they pass unnoticed in broadcast speech all the time.

Prescriptists, however, condemn the use illustrated by [3b], insisting that the 'correct' form is They invited my partner andme to lunch. And here again they seek to justify the claim that [3b] is ungrammatical by an implicit analogy, this time with other situations found in English, such as the example seen in [3a]. In [3a] the pronoun functions by itself as direct object of the verb and invariably appears in accusative case. What is different in [3b] is that the direct object of the verb has the form of a coordination, not a single pronoun. Prescriptists commonly take it for granted that this difference is irrelevant to case assignment. They argue that because we have an accusative in [3a] we should also have an accusative in [3b], so the nominative I is ungrammatical.

But why should we simply assume that the grammatical rules for case assignment cannot differentiate between a coordianated and a non-coordinated pronoun? As it happens, there is another place in English grammar where the rules are sensitive to this distinction - for virtually all speakers, not just some of them:

[4] a. I don't know if you are eligible. b. *I don't know if she and you're eligible.

The sequence you are can be reduced to you're in [4a], where you is subject, but not in [4b], where the subject has the form of a coordination of pronouns. This shows us not only that a rule of English could apply differently to pronouns and coordinated pronouns, but that one rule actually does....

For further information, please read section 2.2 Disagreement between descriptist and prescriptist work in Chapter 1 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, published by Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Re: indirect object or adverbial ?

miriam — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 08:22:04 GMT

You're most welcome, Hela. I love everything connected with English grammar, and syntactic analysis is my favourite topic!

I have A Grammar of Contemporary English and A University Grammar of English with me, so I can even give you page numbers to go with my words this time!

In A Grammar of Contemporary English you read, on page 38, that there are two types of complements: subject complement and object complement. There are examples of both and, on page 39, you have the following examples of object complement:

"They make him the chairman every year" and "they made him happier".

On the same page, you read: "A few verbs take an object complement as in #6 (this is the sentence about making someone the chairman) and these will be referred to as complex-transitive."

In A University Grammar of English you find the same definition/explanation together with the chairman example on page 14. Complex transitive verbs are mentioned again, and more examples are provided, in Ch. 12 ("The verb and its complementation"), in both books.

There is nothing about adverbials being object complements. By definition, adverbials modify either a verb or an entire clause (these are called "sentence adverbials").

I hope this helps.

Miriam

Edouard understands poorly American culinary habits

SpoonfedBaby — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:31:57 GMT

An English grammar book wrote:

Adverbs of manner most often occupy the end position of a clause, where they follow an intransitive verb, or the direct object of a transitive verb.
e.g. We waited patiently for the play to begin.
I sold the strawberries quickly.

Cambridge dictionary wrote:

understand (KNOW) verb [I or T] (understood, understood)
to know the meaning of something that someone says

Hello again everybody,

A university teaching website wrote âEdouard understands poorly American culinary habits.â
I would like to have your opinion on this sentence. Is it a comprehensible sentence? I have been told that that's not understandable American English. Also, can I move the adverb "poorly" to the end of the sentence (Edouard understands American culinary habits poorly)?

A thousand thanks,

SFB