Linda,

 

I agree.  In writing we lack all the visual and aural cues that help us understand what is said.  In speech the “in that order” construction would be unambiguous and not vague.  In writing we certainly have to control the use of pragmatic reference since it can easily reduce to vagueness.  I’m not a writing teacher, although I’ve done that a little, but I get the impression that the risk of using a vague demonstrative has led to an overly broad condemnation of pragmatic reference.  Rather like teachers who ban starting sentences with “because” since that so often leads to a fragment. 

 

Herb

 

 

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,

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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.  

 

 

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

 

Nancy Lewis Tuten, PhD

Professor of English

Director of the Writing Program for the

Pearce Communication Center

Columbia College

1301 Columbia College Drive

Columbia, South Carolina 29203

USA

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

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