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

Re: Show me!

Avangi — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:11:08 GMT

These are idomatic and natural, as you probably know. My sense of it is that sans the original direct object, the original indirect object becomes the direct object. That is, "showing" is something you can do to someone. I don't think it's all that different from "Please take me to the the movies." "Please take me. "Me" is not the indirect object in the first sentence, as it would be in "Please bring me a glass of water.".

I don't mean "show" in the sense of "I'm going to show my horse at the fair." Maybe I'm wrong.

I've never heard "give" used as you suggest in your third example, but the first two are quite natural. (Little kids say, "gimme," but it's sort of an idiom. There's usually a specific direct object in mind.)

Another one like "take me" would be, "Please advise/apprise me of your schedule." Please advise me. Same deal as your examples, but without the indirect object.

Re: transitive verb and intransitive verb

Grammar Geek — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:30:10 GMT

Hello Dudumuzik,

Welcome to the forums.

A transitive verb requires a direct object. You picked a hard one - grammatically, we don't say "I knocked the door." There is an expression "knock wood," but it's an idiom.

Was your question specifically about the verb "to knock" or about transitive verbs in general?

Re: Which way would you sway?

MrPedantic — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:08:15 GMT

Milky wrote:

<I would be interested to see quotations from the early English grammarians that presented spoken English as somehow inferior, or that demonstrated an imposition of inappropriate rules from Latin. >

Do you doubt that was the case?

"Doubt" is too strong a word. I would be interested to see the quotations.

If so, I guess you disagree with this:

"If they have studied "English Grammar", this is probably an encumbrance which they might well put aside for the present, since it is based on a more or less imitative recapitulation of Classical Latin Grammar, which is totally non-applicable to the English language as it now stands.

I would disagree that Classical Latin Grammar is "totally non-applicable" to the English language (or vice versa). It would be truer to say that many aspects of Latin grammar are non-applicable to English.

I would also disagree with the notion that the study of English grammar for any given person is bound to have been based on Latin grammar; though no doubt the statement is true for some people.

[Lowth] condemned "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language"¹).

Sounds sensible.

His most famous (or infamous) contribution to the study of grammar was his prescription that sentences ending with a prepositionâsuch as "what did you ask for?"âare inappropriate in formal writing.

Sounds doubtful. Though Lowth doesn't appear to mention Latin in his reasoning:

"This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style."

And he seems to limit his prescription to the "solemn and elevated Style", which is a relatively rare form of English.

Thus Lowth condemns Addison's sentence "Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case" (corresponding, as he says earlier, to an oblique case in Latin), rather than taking this example and others as evidence from noted writers that "who" can refer to direct objects.

I would not agree with Lowth about Addison's sentence; but nothing here suggests that his justification lay in Latin grammar.

"Objective case" doesn't seem a particularly pernicious phrase; "whom" is undeniably an example; and what remains of the objective case in English "corresponds" in some of its functions to the accusative case in Latin.

I know that some popular sources repeat the notion that early English grammarians attempted to impose Latin grammar on English; but I've yet to see any primary evidence.

MrP

Re: "pass away" VS "fade away" ; "stay away" VS "keep away"

khoff — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:46:59 GMT

A. In many cases "stay away" and "keep away" could be interchangeable, but not in the two examples you give.

1. "Keep away" here would suggest that there was something dangerous about the school itself, rather than just a difficulty in getting to the school. "Everyone has to stay away/keep away from the school until they finish removing the asbestos."

2. "Keep away" can be intransitive -- "keep away from the lake" or transitive "keep the children away from the lake." "Stay away" cannot be used with a direct object -- you can't "stay the children away from the lake."

B. "Pass away," when used about a person, is an idiom that means "to die." "Fade away" just means to diminish gradually or become less noticable.

1. If you said "Old soldiers never die, they simply pass away" it would mean "they never die, they simply die." This doesn't make much sense.

2. "Faded away" does not mean "die." If someone is still alive, but very sick and weak and losing weight and perhaps losing his memory and personality, you might say he is "fading away," but it does not mean dying.

You might say "Grandpa has passed away" if the body is still lying there and you are telling people that he just died moments ago. Otherwise, you would not use the present perfect because Grandpa is ... well, no longer present!

I hope this is helpful.

Re: Difference and/or similarity (syntactic relation)

lupa.pinheiro — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:53:07 GMT

Hi Jim,
no, I'm not asking you to do my homework. Yes, I have some tasks to work on and I got some questions about it. Because in my group we got some different answers for these sentences, then, how I trust the answers that I get from this forum I decided to check it.
In sentences 1 and 2 I found some ergative verbs (they can be used without a direct object).
In sentence 3 both verbs are in present progressive, or for a condition that is realized by a repetition of actions over a period of time that started sometime in the past and will continue for sometime in the past and will continue for sometime in the future.
4a. is a plan and 4b is simple past.
5a.is a habit that he has (talk a lot)
5b. we have an idiom here.
So, I was just trying to ckeck answers, because I'm not sure about them, I don't know if they are enough, or if there are some more information that I could add to it.
Thanks,
Lupa