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

Re: Parsing-- struggling to parse this, any help appreciated

AlpheccaStars — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:45:31 GMT

Communication is supremely important for all social animals.

Communication - subject
is supremely important for all social animals. - predicate
is - linking verb
supremely - adverb
important - predicate adjective modifying communication
for all social animals. - prepositional phrase (adverbial)

It is the glue that links numbers of individuals into a larger whole.

It - pronoun, subject
is the glue that links numbers of individuals into a larger whole. - predicate

is - linking verb
the glue - predicate noun phrase
that - relative pronoun (glue), subject of the dependent adjectival clause: links numbers of individuals into a larger whole.
links - verb
numbers - direct object of verb "links"
of individuals - prepositional phrase (adjectival)
into a larger whole - prepositional phrase (adverbial)

This is as true of ants and bees as it is of humans.
This - pronoun, subject
is as true of ants and bees as it is of humans. - predicate
is - linking verb
as - adverb
true - adjective (this)
of ants and bees - prepositional phrase, 2 objects (adverbial)
as - correlative conjunction, introducing the dependent adverbial clause "it is of humans"
it - pronoun, subject
is - linking verb
of humans - prepositional phrase (adverbial)

Some of the characteristics of complex society (organised communities, a hierarchical structure, and a division of labour) that bespeak the importance of communication in human life appear to have parallels in the animal world.

Some - pronoun, subject
of the characteristics - prepositional phrase (adjectival)
of complex society - prepositional phrase (adjectival)
(organised communities, a hierarchical structure, and a division of labour) - appositive noun phrases
that - relative pronoun (some), subject of the dependent adjectival clause: bespeak the importance of communication in human life

appear to have parallels in the animal world. - predicate
appear - linking verb in main clause
to have parallels in the animal world. - infinitive phrase, predicate nominative
parallels - direct object of infinitive (to have)
in the animal world - prepositional phrase (adverbial)

Re: finding error

Avangi — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:06:52 GMT

I think the trap in (1) is supposed to be that you need "other" when you use the comparative "cleaner than" but you don't need it in "as clean as."

If you say "cleaner than any city," that's logically impossible, because NY is included. It can't be cleaner than itself.

(2) is another common trap, because you want to treat "whom" as the direct object of "I believed." It's more correctly treated as subject of the verb "was," therefore "who."

Edit. Woops! I just noticed that I screwed up number one. You say the correct answer is supposed to be "any other city" and you chose "any city." I'm very sorry, but I have to agree with you, although A is certainly not wrong.

Re: carry on

Avangi — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:32:30 GMT

The definition I have in mind is similar to number 2, but may be colloquial. As applied to a love afair, A would be said to be carrying on with B. That is, my usage would be intransitive, while the usage in number 2 is transitive, a love affair being the direct object.

Etheredge is planning to fight the criminals, not negotiate with them. The interpretation you originally suggested sounds like he's saying, "If the criminals are given a voice, we may as well all give up."

I'll admit you could make a case for "We can't go on like this. Criminals must be eliminated."

I'm leaning toward, "The world cannot allow criminals to participate in the business of government."

- A.

Re: grammatical exercises

Anonymous — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:47:00 GMT

on number two of noun clauses, where you put ???, it is a direct object, and, on number three of noun clauses, the clause is Whoever invented Boston baked beans, and it's a direct object.

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: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:58 GMT

I'll try to give some information on this as a non-professional.This is how it looks like in the serbian language,and I suppose,it is very similar in all other slavic languages and also the latin language.

For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used.If the english language had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case.

But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :
going to, flying to, traveling to..

like in the question given in the opening post,then the noun will be in the dative case.This case you can connect with the nouns following the preposition "to" although the preposition is not necessarily present.The word "dative" derives from latin "dare" which means "to give" and the usage is most obvious on the example of that verb:

I gave my girlfriend a flower.

If you translated this in serbian,"girlfriend" would be in the dative case.Indirect object is in the dative case.The direct object ("a flower") is in the accusative case.

"Cases play a major part in determining a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages, such as English. Because of noun cases, words can often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, though the emphasis will have altered" (from a Wikipedia article on the latin language)
Btw,changing nouns,adjectives,pronouns and numbers to different cases is pretty tough area of the language with more cases,and is often lifelong mistery for many natives,and I know that well.Luckily,english is not a case-sensitive language.

Best regards

Re: direct object indirect object object of a preposition help me! plz

ClarkePeters — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:12:39 GMT

This post is a little dated but since I've been working with my students on this very topic I thought I'd post.

First, you can't understand what the "object of the preposition" is if you don't first know how to identify prepositions. So you need to find a list (google "list prepositions English" or "frequency list prepositions English") and you should get plenty of lists. Depending on which list you go by, there are from 80 to 130 or so prepositions. Most are not used too often, so I'd get a frequency list and try to learn the first 50 or so.   That may sound like a lot of words, but compared to the number of words in Webster's 500,000 word dictionary, that's really very few words--and they are SO IMPORTANT to understanding sentence structure. If you don't want to memorize, no problem, just keep a list with you at all times.

When you come across a word from the list, check to see if it has an object by asking "what" after the preposition.
              John called about the party.
              about what? the party,
              so "party" or "the party" if you include the article, is the object of the preposition.

Be careful, prepositions sometimes act as adverbs.
John got up and went to the kitchen.
up what? ---ummmm, no answer, there is NO object, so "up" is an adverb to "got"

as for DO, ask "what" after the verb.

John made a cake.
John made what? a cake
DO is cake

as for IO, ask "to whom/what?" or "for whom/what?" after the DO
John made Mary a cake.
John made what? a cake
DO is cake
a cake for whom? for Mary
IO is Mary.

The following sentences are exactly the same in meaning! (except maybe in emphasis)

John made Mary a cake.         common usage
John made for Mary a cake.   NOT common usage, but technically
                                                  correct, sometimes used for emphasis
John made a cake for Mary.    common usage

same with "to"
John gave Mary a cake.
John gave to Mary a cake.   NOT common usage
John gave a cake to Mary.

some grammarians will say that an IO can ONLY be between the verb and DO.
Other linguists say functionally there is no difference, so it is OK to say that "to Mary" or "for Mary" is the IO. However, others will argue that they are adverbials answering the question where (to) or why (for) about the verb (made why? for Mary    gave where? to Mary).
How one describes it is not important, as they all function the same.

Re: Preposition placement

Philip — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:35:49 GMT

Spides wrote:
All your sentences could be written with just "all" or "all of." I think that "all" would be designated a pronoun in each of your examples. It can be used as an adjective--She sat up all night--but in your sentences "all" means "the whole number or amount" and is the direct object of the verb "purchased" in all the examples. "Of her gifts" is a prepositional phrase modifying "all." When the prepostion "of" is not actually used in a sentence, it is still understood.

I see "gifts" as the direct object, answering the question of what she bought. The rest is qualifying.

Re: Preposition placement

Spides — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:28:50 GMT

All your sentences could be written with just "all" or "all of." I think that "all" would be designated a pronoun in each of your examples. It can be used as an adjective--She sat up all night--but in your sentences "all" means "the whole number or amount" and is the direct object of the verb "purchased" in all the examples. "Of her gifts" is a prepositional phrase modifying "all." When the prepostion "of" is not actually used in a sentence, it is still understood.

Re: Which way would you sway?

milky — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:11:27 GMT

Do you doubt that was the case?

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.

Lest this seem an arbitrary statement, let me note that English has no "Cases" of the noun, in fact is survives with nothing at all like the five Latin Cases. The English Verb does not match the six "Tenses" of the Latin verb at all, and the insistence on Person in English verbs, as compared to Latin, is virtually without meaning. The constant iteration of the word "Subjunctive" in English grammars is a weak and misleading term since the inherited subjunctive disappeared from the language centuries ago. "

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/EngLatGrammar.html

Lowth's method included criticising "false syntax"; his examples of false syntax were culled from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and other famous writers, raising the question, by what authority did Lowth aspire to judge these writers' syntax? His approach was based largely on Latin grammar, and a number of his judgments were arrived at by applying Latin grammar to English, a misapplication according to critics of a later generation (and his own stated principles; he condemned "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language"¹). 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.

http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-lowth

Lowth said that even though the use of a preposition to end a sentence was suited to the familiar style of writing, it was much less graceful and perspicuous than placing the preposition before the relative. I'd say there's an implication of inferiority there, wouldn't you?

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

Re: Parsing-- struggling to parse this, any help appreciated

Re: finding error

Re: carry on

Re: grammatical exercises

Re: Transformational Rules and Subject-Verb Agreement

Re: About the meaning of &quot;where&quot;

Re: direct object indirect object object of a preposition help me! plz

Re: Preposition placement

Re: Preposition placement

Re: Which way would you sway?

Re: About the meaning of "where"