"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

>>> "Castilleja, Janet" <[log in to unmask]> 4/30/2009 1:11 PM >>>
Hello
 
How would you analyze this sentence?
 
Artists of all kinds have tried  their best to express what love  means to them.
 
'their best to express what love  means to them' seems to be the direct object of 'have tried,' but I am having trouble with 'their best' as  a direct object.  Or is it a noun phrase now?  Or can an adjective phrase function as a direct object?
 
I also see 'to express what love  means to them' as an infinitive clause functioning as a complement to 'best' and 'what love  means to them' as a clause functioning as the direct object of 'express.' It seems to be a relative clause (Love means something to them), but if it is, what noun is it relating to? Or is it a nominal here/
 
I know structures like this occur all the time:  the best is yet to come, etc.  I'm curious about how people handle them, especially when discussing them with students.
 
Janet

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