OK . . . here’s the rest of the message, which I sent by accident
a few minutes ago:
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply, Herb.
I agree with you that most—if not all—readers would
understand the word “that” in your sentence to mean the order of
the pair in the preceding clause. However, would you agree that such a
construction is not a clear as, perhaps, this one:
Finish a direct
quotation with a period followed by closing quotation marks.
Our efforts to communicate—perhaps especially in the business
world where communication is valued largely (if not exclusively) as a means
to an end—are hampered by countless distractions, reader biases, and a
lot of other “noise.” I encourage writers, therefore, to be as
precise as possible. In a training situation—or even one-on-one with a
student in a conference—I would be inclined to encourage a rewrite that
did not include the use of “that”
to point rather generally to an idea rather than to a specific nominal earlier
in the sentence or larger text.
This use of “that” strikes me as similar to my students’
use of “this” to refer to everything they just said in the last two
or three sentences—well, not that
bad, of course, but a lesser degree of the same vague reference.
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
803-786-3706
From:
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:35
PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: gerund vs infinitive
I
like the fact that you treat verbness as a matter of degree, as, I assume, you
would also treat nouns. And you’re right that a gerund is more
nouny than an infinitive. A lot of syntacticians would not even treat the
infinitive in “likes to sing” as a noun phrase, simply as a
tenseless VP serving as complement to “likes.” The drill
question, however, like so many drill questions, oversimplifies matters. Reference
doesn’t have to be simply to a noun; it can be to a clause or even to a
contextual factor. Consider a sentence like
Finish
a direct quotation with a period and quotation marks, in that order.
The
referent of “that” is clearly the order in which the two marks of
punctuation are given, something that is not only not a noun phrase but is
arguably not even a grammatical structure. It is, rather, an ordered
pair, and it’s the order that counts. In the second sentence in the
drill, the referent of “that” is activity of singing, not a
particular word or grammatical structure. It might actually be possible
to come up with situations where one referent would make better sense than the
other.
Herb
From:
Sent: 2008-03-16 23:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: gerund vs infinitive
OK, why is it that I see my mistakes right after I hit send?
Of course, both the infinitive and the gerund follow
the verb “likes,” not
a preposition. I have already sent a correction to Diane on that point, but the
question still remains: is one a better referent than the other, and, if so,
why?
Thanks,
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the
Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
803-786-3706
From:
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 10:44
PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: gerund vs infinitive
Dear listers,
I received an inquiry from someone today and would
like to know how you would have responded to it had it been sent to you. The
original post is at the bottom, and my response is above it.
Thanks for your feedback—I always learn a great
deal from you.
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum
Program
803-786-3706
From: Tuten,
Nancy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 7:11
PM
To: diane skinner
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: gerund vs infinitive?
Diane,
You raise a very interesting question.
I suspect that the test writers regard the gerund as a
clearer referent because you can replace “it” with the gerund and
the sentence makes sense. We can say "She is not good at singing,"
but we cannot say "she is not good at to sing."
Nonetheless, as you point out, both the gerund and the
infinitive are functioning as nominals (objects of the preposition
“like”). One might, therefore, logically conclude that either would
qualify as a clear referent for a pronoun. Perhaps infinitives, although
they can function as nominals, retain more of their “verb-ness”
than gerunds, which quite strongly take on the quality of a thing or an
act—something one could place a determiner in front of: “her
singing,” “the singing,” etc. but not “her to
sing,” “the to sing.”
Thank you for attending our session at the STD
conference.
Best,
Nancy Lewis Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing Program for the
803-786-3706
-----Original Message-----
From: diane skinner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 3:12 PM
To: Tuten, Nancy
Subject: gerund vs infinitive?
Dear Professor Tuten,
I met you at the Sigma Tau Delta Conference in your
Grammar Panel.
I have a question for you.
In my writing center, during grammar drills, a computer-generated
question asked,
"Which is the clearest referent for the
pronoun in the following sentences?"
A: Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at it.
B: Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at it.
The answer was A, but no explanation was given.
Could you please clarify this answer since the verbs
can be followed
by either an infinitive or a gerund, and there will be
virtually no
difference in the meaning of the two sentences.
Does the infinitive "to sing" act as an
object for the verb "likes,"
or does it act as a verb to the linking verb
"likes"?
How can a distinction be made between a gerund being
nominative and an
infinitive being nominative?
Is this a special case because of the word
"likes"?
When you have the time, I would sincerely appreciate a
response.
Thank you.
Diane Skinner
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/ 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/
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ 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/