>Dear Bruce:

I don't have to look it up in Quirk.  I can look it up in Kolln & Funk
(Understanding English Grammar)--although I suspect I looked it up in Quirk
when I first wrote about this way back when.  Here are three examples of
participles as adverbials (p. 122, 6th edition):

My uncle made a fortune selling real estate.  (How?)
The kids came running out of the house (How?  Where?)
Betsy went swimming. (Where?)

On the question of adverbial vs. adjectival infinitives, a good test is the
"in order to" test.  Most adverbial infinitives can be expanded with "in
order": they answer the Why question.  Another test is movability:
adverbials can often be moved; adjectivals usually can't.  In Kathleen's
leather example--money to purchase leather--clearly the infinitive could
open the sentence: That makes it adverbial.

Martha




Gordon,
>
>Maybe we ought to have Martha look it up in Quirk, _et.al._
>
>To me the phrase "go fishing" does indeed have the same force as "fish" in the
>generic sense.   Like "I go fishing on Fridays" for the same meaning as "I
>fish on Fridays".  "Fishing" is the gerund, as in "I like fishing" or "I am
>busy fishing."  I think of "go" as a verb that likes to take a gerund as a
>complement, _i.e._ a gerund in the form of an adverbial noun, if you like.
>(The Latins had a special noun form of the verb, a supine, that would express
>purpose.)  We may say, "I go swimming, jogging, sunning, and searching for
>shells on the beach in that order on Fridays." or " I swim, jog, sun, and
>search for shells on the beach in that order on Fridays."
>
>Bruce Despain
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 08/03/01 09:57AM >>>
>This brings up a question we have been pondering = what is the function of
>'fishing' in "I go fishing"? It would seem the preferable solution would be
>"I fish."  Is the structure using 'go' as an apparent 'helping verb'
>idiomatic; somewhat like "I have *got* a cold."? In "I go fishing," can
>'fishing' somehow act like an adverb -- I go {where}; I cannot see it as a
>Direct Object, but maybe my sight is not what it used to be.
>Gordon Carmichael
>Central Texas College and Tarleton State University, Killeen, Texas
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Bruce Despain" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 10:07 AM
>Subject: Re: <no subject>
>
>
>This discrepancy between Marylou and Sophie is in the area where semantics
>and syntax conflict.  I wonder about the following observations.
>
>In the sentence "I must go" are we tempted to think that "go" is the object
>of the verb "must"?  (We can ask, "What must you (do)?")  Historically, we
>could probably make a good argument that at some time it was so perceived.
>What about in the periphrastic version, "I have to go"?  Does the infinitive
>marked by "to" make it clear that maybe we have a complement (object) to the
>verb "have"?  Similarly with some other periphrastic versions of the modals
>(can - be able to; will - is going to, is about to) , where we have
>complements to adjectives.  At one time this may have been the perception.
>But as with other formations of the verb, we now have modals as well as
>helping verbs for the semantic categories established as tense and aspect.
>
>Do the Australians now have a compound verb that works like modal
>pariphrasis in "try to improve"?  Do they want to make "try" a quasi-modal?
>Perhaps the contrasting colloquial "try and improve", which seems to be an
>attempt to maintain the original syntactic independence, motivates the new
>syntactic analysis for "try".
>
>For me the object of "try" is an infinitive phrase serving as a noun phrase
>and the object of "improve" is a noun phrase.  With the phrase "try and
>improve" the accomplishment is implied.  Here the verb "try" is either
>intransitive or has an undersood object of "something", and the verb
>"improve" shares the same subject, but has its own object.  The existence
>and the contrast of these two collocations, seems to give "try to improve"
>the implication that the improvement will in fact occur.
>
>Bruce Despain
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 08/03/01 05:55AM >>>
>`Mary is trying to improve the condition of her house':
>
>There is no question in the above sentence of the verb's being anything more
>or less than `is trying to improve', nor of its object's being anything
>other than `the condition of the house'.  `Mary', the subject of this
>active-voice verb, is not acting upon `to improve the condition of her
>house'; she is acting upon `the condition of her house'.
>
>Analysis of this sentence must note that it contains an active-voice verb,
>and that the characteristic of an active-voice verb is that its subject acts
>upon its object: Its subject names its actor, and its object the acted-upon
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