Richard,
I spent some time working on the post previous to this one, and
then discovered that you had brought up the “easy to / eager to” distinction in
your chart, below (this is what I get for hitting “send” before updates). At
any rate, it was not my intention to disregard your argument; I’m hoping that
the previous post addresses it to some extent, at least. In short, I would
agree that any grammatical theory would need to account for those
differences; I simply think a grammatical description that acknowledges
the differences but without ascribing to any particular explanation for them might
be pedagogically viable
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English
Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Veit, Richard
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 3:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Correct?
Bill:
The two sentences you mentioned (“We wanted him to be hired”
and “We wanted him to go home”) differ only in that the first has
a passive infinitive, the second an active infinitive. Other pairs of sentences
with superficial structural similarities may represent very diverse concepts.
Such pairs are shown in the left column; the right column is an attempt to
represent the sentence’s approximate meaning, not an attempt to state an
underlying deep structure. Most of the examples are taken from my book Discovering
English Grammar:
We wanted him to leave. We promised him to leave. |
We wanted [he leaves] We promised him [we leave] |
We want him to be the new attorney general. We select him to be the new attorney general. |
We want [he is the new AG] We select him [he is the new AG] |
Wilma is eager to please. Wilma is easy to please. |
Wilma is eager [Wilma pleases someone] [Someone pleases Wilma] is easy |
The Warthogs are the team to win. The Warthogs are the team to watch. |
The Warthogs are the team [the team wins] The Warthogs are the team [we watch the team] |
We prayed for the song to end. We prayed for a song to dance to. |
We prayed for [the song ends] We prayed for a song [we dance to the song] |
The denture salesman encountered a difficult person to sell to. The denture salesman encountered a toothless person to sell to. |
The denture salesman encountered a person [selling to that person is difficult] The denture salesman encountered a toothless person [the salesman sells to that person] |
Aladdin hoped for a genie to appear. Aladdin hoped for a bride to marry. |
Aladdin hoped [a genie would appear] Aladdin hoped for a bride [Aladdin would marry the bride] |
Your college years are a time to remember. Your college years are a time to learn. |
Your college years are a time [you remember that time] Your college years are a time [you learn during that time] |
It seems to me that any grammatical theory would need to account
for these differences.
Dick
________________________________
Richard
Veit
Department of English
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English
Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William
C
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 9:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Correct?
Dear All:
I suspect that one of the reasons that many modern grammars use
what seem to be simplistic structural pattern definitions is that the
differences among those sentences are differences in what the various
participants are doing – the relationships among them – and we don’t really
have a theoretically agnostic way of talking about that. The minute a term like
“underlying subject” is used, the description is locked into a particular
model.
This is true of all descriptions, of course (simply by
using a label like “infinitive,” I’ve committed to a kind of model), but cases
like these bring up major points of contention among current models. Almost
everyone who works on English is happy with the term “infinitive,” but there is
nowhere near the same level of consensus about the idea that infinitives
are really, truly, made out of full sentences, etc. I have a knee-jerk reaction
the minute I see a phrase like “underlying subject,” and I’m sure I use phrases
that others on the list would have an immediate negative reaction to as well.
One way authors of grammar books can try to dodge the entire issue is
simply to omit any references to this type of material at all, and thus we end
up with [S V DO INF].
Older grammars, like the ones Herb mentions, did something that
I think we can still do: we can all agree that there are different patterns of
relationships among the participants, even if we don’t agree on why
those differences exist. To some extent, the differences among the patterns can
be “anchored” by relating them to native-speaker reactions to questions about
implications of the structure (e.g. “If I say that ‘X V-ed Y to Z’ am I saying
that it’s Y who will be doing the Z-ing?”). In other words, we can adopt
ways to probe for differences that there will be wide consensus on, even if
there is no such consensus on what the differences mean for a theory of
linguistic structure (this is what I’m trying to get at with the term
“theoretically agnostic”).
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
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