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

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: I need your help,please.

Avangi — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:36:54 GMT

1. "women" - use plural to match "the elderly" & "are more LIKELY"

2. The goals of our program ARE - use plural verb with plural subject

3. MANY benefits - "Much" is for stuff; "many" is for things you can count.

4. there IS a lot of space (missing verb in clause) & IN which he could write (or) WHERE he could write

5. (wrong choice of conjunctions) use "but" instead of "or"

6. in ALMOST every country

7. is EXTREMELY important (use adverb form to modify predicate adjective)

8. positive OR negative (conjunction)

9. While I WAS TAKING a walk (past tense to match "saw") & RAKING (wrong words - "talking" for "taking" and "ranking" for "raking")

10. to care FOR their parents

11. five LAPTOP TESTS ("tests" is a noun - object of the preposition - and is plural because there are five. "Laptop" is an adjective in this case and doesn't have to agree. It could be a noun if used alone, like "Five laptops were found to be defective.")

12. INSECTS (plural to agree with animals) & I think "fossilized" is the better adjective & I'd suggest using two separate sentences: "insects. Fossilized" & a period at the end

13. I think this is okay. It needs a period at the end.

Congratulations on your first post!

Re: Tips on listening to complex sentences with double negatives, etc.

Ant_222 — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:36:42 GMT

Well, would you have trouble perceiving this sentence in your native language? I suppose, no. That's the solution: learn English until you develop "a hardware support" for it, i.e until language processing is shifted beneath the conscious.

BTW, double negation, while working in Boolean logic, doesn't always apply to predicates! So:

«I don't know why he shouldn't have left her alone» is not equal to
«I know why he should have left her alone»

HTH

Re: you'd/ I don't want to go YOU HAD ? PHRASAL VERB ?

Cool Breeze — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:49:09 GMT

"I don't want to go." (= I do not want to go.)

do = auxiliary needed in this negative clause, present tense
want = plain/bare present infinitive, or infinitive without a to particle, which has been omitted due to do

These two verbs can be said to be the main verb of the sentence. Please note that unlike many other languages, in English the term predicate is not used to refer to the main verb of the clause. In English, predicate means something else; it can include words that are not verbs at all!

to go = present infinitive in full because to must be used after want

In this sentence to is not a preposition and consequently there is no phrasal verb in the sentence. Here are some examples of phrasal verbs, in other words, verbs followed by a preposition or perhaps we had better call them adverbs in many instances:

You may leave out that word.
I got off the train.
I don't get on with him.
Why didn't you bring that up at the meeting?

Phrasal verbs are good English although quite a few of them are mainly used in spoken English. In written English many would write you may omit that word instead of you may leave out that word.

Cheers
CB

Re: Question on Foot of English Metric Poetry

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 13:07:26 GMT

(Mr M forgot to log in again!-- MM)

It is a matter of natural sentence flow and stress for meaning. Let's write it like a prose sentence:

I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.

Spoken in conversation, sentences carry several levels of stress, not just stressed and unstressed. This sentence would probably be uttered with primary (main) stress on poem and tree-- these are the core words of meaning here-- and with secondary stress on lovely-- this adjective essentially defines the relationship between poem and tree. Below that would be tertiary stress on the simple subject (I), the simple predicate (see) and the negative word (never)-- notice that all of these stresses appear in the dependent clause, not in the matrix clause (I think), which only colours the core statement about poems and trees. (I should include a caveat that others may find differing stress patterns, and different intent would also produce others)

Trees is written in iambics, which as you probably know is a common rhythm of spoken English. To a certain extent, we tend to talk that way, and iambic stress patterns will impose themselves on our utterances. It is probably a circular phenomenon, actually-- we tend to speak in iambics, and so sentence structure and patterns of idioms and stock phrases are therefore formed and preserved in iambics.

Blank verse is iambic; it just does not rhyme. I think you mean free verse. Free verse depends on rhythms set, not by syllables, but by the cadence of phrases, images, and syntax. It should be relatively easy for you to learn to feel the difference if you recite aloud (as you should all poetry) this excerpt from Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach:

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

And compare it with some of Thomas Grey's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Now, which one is free verse, and which is in metric verse?

Re: EITHER/NEITHER (USAGE)

CalifJim — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 05:41:18 GMT

Just as "too" is added to a second, similar affirmative statement, "either" is added to a second, similar negative statement. The two cannot be interchanged. In this pattern two different subjects have the same predicate.

Canada requires this, and Mexico requires this [too / *either].
Canada doesn't require this, and Mexico doesn't require this [either / *too].

We can shorten the second negative in two different ways.

(1) Leave out the words after the negative and before "either"
Canada doesn't require this, and Mexico doesn't ............either.

(2) Substitute "and neither + verb + subject" for "and + subject + verb + ..." (leaving out the same words as in (1)) Note: The "not" or "n't" is not counted as part of the verb.
Canada doesn't require this, and neither does Mexico.

Here are more examples of these two ways of shortening the second of two negatives.

I don't like anchovies on pizza, and my friends don't like anchovies on pizza (either).
I don't like anchovies on pizza, and my friends don't either.
I don't like anchovies on pizza, and neither do my friends.

My brother can't read Arabic, and I can't read Arabic (either).
My brother can't read Arabic, and I can't either.
My brother can't read Arabic, and neither can I.

The House of Representatives has not approved that legislation, and the Senate has not approved that legislation (either).
The House of Representatives has not approved that legislation, and the Senate has not either.
The House of Representatives has not approved that legislation, and neither has the Senate.

I hope that helps.

CJ

Re: negative questions

paco2004 — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 04:24:35 GMT

Hello Teo again

Let's start with the normal predicate "The whole land is before you". And first let's negate it and then change it to a question form by inverting the subject and the finite verbal. Then the process would be like as the below:
(Informal NEG) The whole land isn't before you. -> inversion -> Isn't the whole land before you?
(Formal NEG) The whole land is not before you. -> inversion -> Is the whole land not before you?
We can't make "Is not the whole land before you?" by such an operation. So "Is not the whole land before you" is deemed as incorrect at least in current English (this type of negation question was used before 17 century).

paco

Re: Much too much much

Roro — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:49:53 GMT

Hello paco

First of all, what's this {!} 'Boku-wa kimi-o ooini aisu'! {ha-ha!}
H'mm ... we can say
â¢ 'totemo-aishiteiru' â ('totemo' as a verbal/predicate intensifier, not only as a adjectival intensifier)
â¢ 'ooini-utsukushii-hana' â ? (but now I'm getting accustomed.., seems it's a matter of style. It's ok, too.)
And: 'ooini-yorokoba-shii-news' â for me it's okay, normal. Because of articiple-ness?!
(BTW how do you feel about 'zen-zen-omoshiroi', 'zen-zen-oishii' or 'nanigeni~' (instead of 'nanige-naku~')? Do you accept them?) (Seems like they work primarily as verbal/predicate intensifiers still.) (In connection with 'negative porality I was thinking about them and got confused & interested.)

Yep, I deleted my post, left only most important part. I was afraid it would bother your further discussion; in addition I couldn't find any convincing (semantic) explanation myself. Sorry for that, and I was really glad at your post all the more, since you remembered the content of my post and appear to be of the same oppinion with me. And you, too, don't know why it is so. Curious indeed, isn't it.

Your point interested me, but it looked too complicated, there are a lot of alternative ways, exceptions. As you pointed out, in Group-2 there isn't any problem in using the same expression! (Then it's rather strange if we applied here some logic.)
I almost decided: throw every grammarians' disput out of my head; I'll use, from now on, only post posed 'very much' in every case. I was about to give up, but I'm really glad that I share with you same questions!

You asked, paco, which one sound more natural. I've never thought of that. But the picture must be more complicated. Let me think.

Thanks a lot, paco! See you, have a cheery weekend,

Re: By no means the last theorem

rvw — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 04:19:42 GMT

Dear MrPedantic, yulysess, and Roro,

We have opened several issues in this thread. I would like to go over some of them and state what my thinking is about them now that we have discussed them.

MrPedantic's original post asked why very and much cannot be used equally, interchangeably when modifying regular adjectives, present participles, and past participles.

1. I would say that the adverbial use of much, in the sense of very, has simply evolved into what it is:

usu. used with adjectival past participles "much interested", "much pleased by the compliment", "much gratified" and in negative constructions "not much good at all".

---Webster's Third New International Dictionary. MrPedantic's argument does not answer its use in negative constructions: She did not study much. For a more detailed explanation, go back 800 years and trace its use. (Note that adverbial much by itself has very limited use, while very can be applied to: regular adjectives, adverbs, adjectival present participles, and adjectival past participles. Perhaps adverbial much evolved as just a fill-in in those applications where very cannot be used.)

2. As yulysess noted, we do not use very to modify verbs. Very has been used as a pure intensive since Middle English. The use of very becomes debatable with verbals, which have a dual character of verbs and modifiers. In the long article I quoted from Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, it is argued that premodificaton by very is a characteristic, explicit indication, test of adjectives, not participles. Then the question is not whether very should modify a participle, but is the participle an adjective. Quirk gives four tests for determining if a participle is an adjective, but "...for all practical purposes you are going to have to trust your ear." Participles tend to become acceptably adjectival over time.

In this vein, I would like to quote from Understanding Grammar, by Paul Roberts:

The peculiar characteristic of the participle is that it is at once part modifier and part verb. We see its modifying nature in its ability to fulfill all the functions of the adjective; it is verblike in its ability to express tense and voice and to be attended by subjects and objects. Some theorists attempt to distinguish participles with adjectival force and participles with verb force. They would find adjectival force in sitting in "a sitting duck," because the participle describes the duck, but verb force in sitting in "The duck, sitting quietly in the water, observed the scenery," because the participle tells what the duck was doing. But the distinction is tenuous; most participles are adjectival and verbal at the same time. In both examples, sitting may be said to describe the duck by telling what the duck is doing.
To be sure, one force or the other may predominate. The adjective force is stronger when the participle occurs in the attributive or predicate postion, in which we cannot use the compound forms and in which the participle cannot occur with subject or object. The verb force is likely to be stronger in the other positions, where the participle with its subject or object is often the equivalent of a modifying clause....

3. I partially disagree with yulysess' statement "However, we use (very) much but not very before a past participle which is part of passive: The new by-pass was (very) much needed." Again, if to your ear the participle is an adjective, very by itself is acceptable. He was very discouraged.

4. My ear disagrees with yulysess' prohibition of very much before adjectival participles. She was very much disturbed to hear the news does not especially jar my senses. Maybe I'm just well-adusted to participles as adjectives.

PS
I'm on page 80, Roro.

Re: Thank you! and...

paco2004 — Wed, 18 May 2005 02:36:58 GMT

Hello guys

One of my dictionaries (Genius E-J dictionary) explains the adverbial use of "much" as follows:

[1] Adverbial "much" is usually used in negative or interrogative sentences.
(EX) I don't like the picture much =I don't much like the picture.
(EX) Do you see him much?

[2] When "much" is in assertive contexts, it is usually modified by "very" or "so".
(EX) I like the picture very much.

[3] But "much" can be used even in assertive sentences when the verbs combined with it are those like "admire", "appreciate", "prefer", "regret", or "surpass". When it is used this way, "much" should be put in a pre-verbal position.
(EX) I much prefer a dry wine.
(EX) I would much appreciate advice from moderators.

[4] "Much" can be used to modify some negative-sense adjectives like "annoyed", "confused" or "distressed". Positive-sense adjectives are modified by "very" or "very much" when they are used in assertive predicates, but they can be modified by "much" in the negative/interrogative sentences.
(EX) I was very pleased by what I saw there.
(EX) I was very much pleased by what I saw there.
(EX) I was not much pleased by what I saw there.
(EX) Were you much pleased by what you saw there?

This is what I found in the dictionary, but I myself am wondering why we should not use "much" in assertive/positive contexts. Could someone kindly give me a reasonable explanation?

paco