Paul,
This is a different usage from the one that had been asked about, which was "demand + to-infinitive." Shakespeare's usage is "demand" as an odd sort of ditransitive, on in which the IO is source rather than recipient. The PP version of "demand me nothing" would have been "demand nothing of/from me". (Shakespeare would probably have used "of" since its replacement by "from" is a Modern English phenomenon. "of" and "off" are originally the same word, in OE, and it had "from" as one of its meanings.) As Joan Beal argues in her English in Modern Times, Early Modern English, which included Shakespeare, exhibited a high degree of instability that stabilized in the 18th c. The "demand + to-infinitive" was common from the mid 16th through the mid 18th cc. and pretty much disappeared after that. The ditransitive use of "demand" you illustrate, according to the OED doesn't actually become common till the 1630s, after Shakespeare's death, so for some reason they did not use these examples, although "demand me how+S" occurred in the mid 16th and would have served as a model for the analogical development in Shakespeare.
Herb
Bill & Herb,
I'm a transplanted New Yorker, too, but I think my excess exposure to Shakespeare makes it sound "normal" to me. Iago's final words echo in my head:
"Demand me nothing; what you know, you know:
From this time forth I never will speak word" (Othello 5.2.303-04).
It's used elsewhere, too, as this interesting one from Cymbeline: "We'll mannerly demand thee of thy story" (3.6.91).
I think this may be similar to what E. A. Abbott calls "the redundant object" as in Anthony & Cleopatra: "We'll hear him what he says" (5.1.51). What do you think?
Paul D.
P.S. Shakespeare is not the only poet who uses this construction: "Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?" - Wm. Cullent Bryant's "The Future Life," and in Chapter 19 of Walter Scott's The Betrothed: ".. in a tone how cold and indifferent do you demand me to reign my hope."
----- Original Message ----
From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 5:59:50 PM
Subject: Re: Odd "demand" construction
I think it's an analogical change. Desiderative verbs, like the ones Richard listed, generally take infinitival complements. Demand is the unusual desiderative that doesn't, and so it's not surprising to find this usage spreading.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Veit, Richard
Sent: Tue 12/5/2006 4:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Odd "demand" construction
For me (transplanted New Yorker), you can beg, ask, implore, instruct,
forbid, desire, or expect in that sentence, but you can't demand.
________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English, UNCW
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 3:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Odd "demand" construction
Every so often, I find myself in a situation in which a particular
construction sounds blatantly ungrammatical to me, but not to the
student I'm talking to, and isn't one covered by any of the dialect
materials I've read. Today, it was the following (shortened paraphrase
of original):
She demanded her father to let her live her own life.
I can't use demand this way; it's not (to use an older jargon term) a
"raising verb." My student, who is a native English-speaker, saw
absolutely nothing wrong with it. Have any of you seen this usage
before? I'm trying to figure out whether this is an idiosyncratic usage
by a single student, or a dialect item I haven't noticed before (either
my student's dialect, or a lack of the construction in mine - I speak a
modified version of Alabamite).
Thanks in advance,
Bill Spruiell
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/
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/
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/
|
