I'm forwarding this thoughtful post from Johanna. I'll respond in anothger post. Craig- --------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: See spot run] From: "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, January 25, 2006 3:36 pm To: "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig, Once again, feel free to post this. You're right that "finite verb" is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for "independent clause". The other part of the definition is that the clause is not playing a constituent role such as subject, direct object, or modifier in another clause. This is what people mean when they say a "complete sentence" can "stand alone" -- it doesn't need whatever it is a complement or modifier of. As to causative, perception, and so on types of verbs, "consider" is not a causative. If you consider a movie sophisticated, it does not make the movie sophisticated; the sentence states your subjective opinion. "Wishing doesn't make it so." The problem with gerunds is that people call them a kind of "noun". This is a form/function confusion. A gerund is a form of a verb which is filling a _nominal_ constituent role. It retains some of its verb "privileges" in such roles, hence the appearance of objects and modifiers. People like to define constituent roles like subject and direct object by meaning or strictly by grammar (e.g., the subject controls inflection of the verb), but we need to take discourse function seriously, too. I haven't studied the matter carefully enough to make pronouncements, but the discourse function of referring has to be considered in defining "nominal" -- nominals direct the listener's attention to a particular thing, event, etc., and make it available as a head for modifiers, verbs, and such. To use terms very loosely, they take an action ("Swimming against the current"), event ("Letting the prisoner out [was a big mistake]"), etc. available as a topic to make a comment on; they take various concepts and enable them to be arguments of predicates, in the logical sense. If you want to make a comment about a particular event, you can create a nominal clause, finite or nonfinite, and put it in subject position, allowing you to predicate something of it: 1 _That Mary ate the peanuts_ (nominalized event) was a bad idea (predicate). She's allergic to peanuts. 2_Mary eating peanuts_ was a bad idea. 3_Mary's eating peanuts_ was a bad idea. 4_For Mary to eat peanuts_ was a bad idea. Some of these nominalizations are "nounier" than others: "eating" in 3 is so nouny, it can be modified by a possessive; but in 1 the eating concept is expressed as a finite verb. Topicality also plays a role, as subjects and text topics or subtopics often correspond; making a noun phrase an indirect object is also sometimes a function of how topical/given the referent is. This can be shown by appropriateness judgments on question/answer pairs: - What did you give John for his birthday? - I gave John a book. or I gave him a book. -Who(m) did you give a book to? -I gave John a book. -This is inappropriate IF THE INTONATION IS NORMAL, with heavy stress on "book" instead of "John". Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/