Hi Dick,
Interesting! I find your reasoning very persuasive.
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.
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.
(I'm a bit boggled to hear myself proposing that the distinction between nominal/adverbial can be ambiguous.)
Beth
>>> Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]> 4/30/2009 6:40 PM >>>
Beth,
Re: "Artists of all kinds have tried their best to express what love means
to them."
The phrase "to express what love means to them" is certainly an infinitive
phrase, but is it adverbial or nominal?
- I tried a poem to express my love.
This infinitive phrase is adverbial, indicating why I tried the
poem.
- I tried to express my love.
This infinitive phrase is nominal, the direct object of "tried."
I opt for nominal in our sentence. I think "their best" is an adverbial, not
the direct object, since it answers the question "Tried how?" rather than
"Tried what?" On the other hand, "to express what love means to them" can
answer the question "Tried what?" so I'd say it is the direct object.
Dick
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Beth Young <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> "Artists of all kinds have tried their best to express what love means to
> them."
>
> Here's my take: "to express what love means to them" is an adverbial
> infinitive phrase.
>
> 1. You can move it around: To express what love means to them, artists of
> all kinds have tried their best.
>
> 2. It answers the question "why" or "in what manner" the verb happens.
> Artists of all kinds have tried their best. Why? "to express what love
> means to them."
>
> Without that adverbial infinitive phrase, it's easier to see that the main
> sentence is transitive: THEY have tried SOMETHING.
>
> "Their best" is a noun phrase/direct object. I don't have a problem with
> "best" functioning as a noun--contrast with "their happy" which clearly
> doesn't work.
>
> To make the whole sentence passive would be clunky, but it is doable:
>
> "To express what love means to them, their best has been tried (by artists
> of all kinds)."
>
> This passive sentence is bothersome, not so much because of the passive
> voice, but because we don't know who "them" and "their" refers to until we
> get to the end. I could imagine writing this sort of passage:
>
> Their best has been tried. (And it still wasn't good enough.)
>
> That's how I see it, anyway. Thanks for the distraction from paper
> grading.
>
> Beth
>
>
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