I may have just posted "dud" email by mistake right before this one , so apologies for that -- I'm using a different front end program for email than I'm used to. Here's what it was supposed to be:
Martha, Dick, et al.,
Just some potential support: I've tried substituting in "mightily" for "their best" to see if the patterns are roughly the same, on the logic that "mightily" is pretty clearly a manner adverb and its meaning is in the same ballpark as "their best" in this context (I know, it's colloquial, and similarity in meaning doesn't always entail similarity in structure, but still...):
Artists have tried mightily to express what love means to them.
Artists have tried their best to express what love means to them.
?Artists have mightily tried to express what love means to them.
*Artists have their best tried to express what love means to them.
*Mightly artists have tried to express what love means to them.
*Their best artists have tried to express what love means to them.
(sequence is possible but only with different meaning)
*Artists have tried express what love means to them mightily.
*Artists have tried to express what love means to them their best.
The only real problem for the manner adverb view, I think, is the impossibility of having "their best" fall between the first aux (finite marker) and the rest of the verbal group, but trying to put "mightily" there produces some awkwardness as well -- it may be yet another example of the "heavy material goes after the head" pattern, although some other manner adverbs make that claim iffy.
Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of MARTHA KOLLN
Sent: Sat 5/2/2009 9:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: New Sentence
On Fri, May 1, 2009 09:34 AM, Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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>Beth, Dick, et al.,
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>Sentences can get really tricky (and ambiguous) when idioms like "tried their
best" are involved. The first thing I questioned about the artist sentence
was whether the infinitive phrase could be written with "in order," which I
consider the first test for "adverbial":
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> I drove fast [in order] to get home in time for the news.
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>The other test, as someone mentioned, is movability:
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> To get home in time for the news, I drove fast.
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>When "try" is connected with an infinitive, that infinitive is nearly always a
direct object--a "something" or "someone":
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> I tried to get home in time for the news. i.e., I tried "something."
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>
>In the artist sentence, it seems to me that the infinitive passes the
"something" test more clearly than the "in order to" test. It's true that
"tried their best" is indeed a common expression, I think that "tried very
hard" is what it means (an adverbial of degree), rather than "tried something."
>
>For the infinitive phrase here to be adverbial--to pass either the "in order"
test or the movability test--the sentence would need a clear "something" as
direct object:
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> Artists of all kinds have tried beauty and truth in all of its manifestations
[in order] to express what love means to them.
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>This sentence works in the passive:
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> Beauty and truth in all of their manifestations have been tried by artists to
express what love means to them.
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>While the original artist sentence, with its infinitive as direct object,
doesn't work in the passive, that doesn't mean it isn't transitive. Most
transitive verbs that take infinitives (want, like, expect, etc.) are not
passive candidates either:
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> I want to take piano lessons.
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> I like to play the guitar.
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> I expect to perform at Carnegie Hall.
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>Verbs that take gerunds as direct objects could possibly be squeezed into a
passive, but it's not very comfortable:
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> The audience enjoyed listening to the guitar music.
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> ?Listening to the guitar music was enjoyed by the audience. [I don't think
so!]
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>That's my take on those expressive artists.
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>Martha
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>Beth,
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>Good point. Our problem is that "tried my best" is an idiomatic phrase, which
limits internal analysis. All of these are possible:
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>I tried to succeed.
>I attempted to succeed.
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I endeavored to succeed.
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>
But "my best" only works with "tried":
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>>I tried my best to succeed.
>* I attempted my best to succeed.
>* I endeavored my best to succeed.
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>
Interestingly, it is also possible to use "tried my best" in a different,
nonidiomatic way, where "my best" is the direct object:
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>>First I tried a half-hearted effort, but it didn't work, so I tried my best,
and that worked.
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Unlike the other uses, here "my best" is what was tried, not how something was
tried.
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>Dick
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>>On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Beth Young <<#>> wrote:
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Hi Dick,
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Interesting! I find your reasoning very persuasive.
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>
Still . . . "their best" isn't at all moveable. And there are lots of
examples of "x gave y their best," in which "their best" is a direct object.
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Could it be that our intuition about how fixed an entity "their best" is?
i.e., if you think of "their best" as a discrete, identifiable effort, like a
poem or a chocolate souffle, then the phrase seems nominal and "to express what
love means to them" seems adverbial. But if you think of "their best" as a
kind of move in a certain direction (like moving towards the horizon--you never
arrive), then "to express what love means to them" seems more nominal and
"their best" more adverbial.
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>
(I'm a bit boggled to hear myself proposing that the distinction between
nominal/adverbial can be ambiguous.)
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Beth
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>>> Dick Veit <<#>> 4/30/2009 6:40 PM >>>
>>
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>Beth,
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Re: "Artists of all kinds have tried their best to express what love means
>
to them."
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>
The phrase "to express what love means to them" is certainly an infinitive
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phrase, but is it adverbial or nominal?
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- I tried a poem to express my love.
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This infinitive phrase is adverbial, indicating why I tried the
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poem.
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- I tried to express my love.
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This infinitive phrase is nominal, the direct object of "tried."
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I opt for nominal in our sentence. I think "their best" is an adverbial, not
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the direct object, since it answers the question "Tried how?" rather than
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"Tried what?" On the other hand, "to express what love means to them" can
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answer the question "Tried what?" so I'd say it is the direct object.
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Dick
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On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Beth Young <<#>> wrote:
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> "Artists of all kinds have tried their best to express what love means to
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> them."
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> Here's my take: "to express what love means to them" is an adverbial
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> infinitive phrase.
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> 1. You can move it around: To express what love means to them, artists of
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> all kinds have tried their best.
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> 2. It answers the question "why" or "in what manner" the verb happens.
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> Artists of all kinds have tried their best. Why? "to express what love
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> means to them."
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> Without that adverbial infinitive phrase, it's easier to see that the main
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> sentence is transitive: THEY have tried SOMETHING.
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> "Their best" is a noun phrase/direct object. I don't have a problem with
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> "best" functioning as a noun--contrast with "their happy" which clearly
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> doesn't work.
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> To make the whole sentence passive would be clunky, but it is doable:
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> "To express what love means to them, their best has been tried (by artists
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> of all kinds)."
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> This passive sentence is bothersome, not so much because of the passive
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> voice, but because we don't know who "them" and "their" refers to until we
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> get to the end. I could imagine writing this sort of passage:
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> Their best has been tried. (And it still wasn't good enough.)
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> That's how I see it, anyway. Thanks for the distraction from paper
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> grading.
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> Beth
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Martha Kolln
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