Job Discussion Forums

[Sashadroogie]

Just to clarify, I assume that all posters know that 'intransitive' means that the verb cannot have an object. In this example, the branches which are bending do not have an object - and certainly not in the grass! So, why the problem with with the label 'intransitive'?

Hence my curiosity...

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

1. "I hate it raining so much.

2. My smoking twenty cigarettes a day annoys them."

Both present participle forms (i.e. raining / smoking) are being used as gerunds in the above. In sentence 1, the gerund "raining" is used as a direct object; in sentence 2, the gerund "smoking" is used as a subject. Both gerunds are in gerund phrases: "it raining so much" is what "I hate"
; "My smoking twenty cigarettes a day is what "annoys them".

However, in my opinion, sentence 1 should be written this way:

1. I hate its raining so much.

While it's not 100%, the "subject of a gerund" is usually possessive, and since it's not "it" (i.e. the weather, generally speaking) that I hate but the weather when it's raining, I'd say the possessive is needed.

Actually, it's a rather awkward way to put it, and I'd be more likely to say/write this:

I hate it when it rains so much.

Regards,
John

P.S. For students, the most confusing usage of the gerund/gerund phrase, I'd say, is when it's used as a complement:

His hobby is collecting stamps.

since it so closely resembles the continuous/progressive tense.

[fluffyhamster]

(@Sasha:) Perhaps I've been dipping into the likes of the COBUILD Grammar too much (or too little, more like!), but I've become intrigued by the concept of 'phase' i.e. verbs in phase ("two actions that are closely linked"), and if I've understood it correctly, a chain such as 'I want to meet' is viewed as an instance of phase, and the term 'object' mainly reserved in the COBUILD for literal objects e.g. 'I want to meet someone' or 'I wanted to appreciate something' or 'I came to appreciate something' (though there is a brief mention of reported [subordinate] clauses "often thought of as being an object"). Now it may be that 'branches bending to meet the grass' isn't an instance of phase, as the relation between the verbs might (but only might) be one of 'in order to' (that is, "the first verb has a complete meaning of its own", with the second verb "giving a reason for the first action" rather than "completing the information about it"), but these are complications a grammar could perhaps do without, and the 'in order to' relation would seem only implicit in certainly the 'to' alone. So if there is arguably some sort of holism in the apparently transitive 'wanting to meet someone' (though believe it or not, the Collins Easy Learning English Verbs doesn't include verbs like 'want' or 'like' in its 'A-Z of important verbs' section), why not in 'bending to meet the grass'. And the usual "functional" sleights-of-hand don't always quite work: although 'I wanted to meet someone' may well be viewed by some as simply 'I wanted this', can the same be said of 'I came to appreciate something' (> '*I came this')? The latter of which is not necessarily "I came in order to..." but could very well be "I ended up appreciating..." instead. That is, why have inconsistent conceptions of 'object' (grammatical when substituting for entire to-V... chains following 'want' say, versus literal when substituting for just a bona fide noun ('I came to appreciate this'))? Personally, I prefer surface-linear consistency and tacit understandings whenever possible, "superficial" though all that may seem.

@Johnslat: Interesting that you opted ultimately for a finite subordinate clause re. the 'raining' example. That and the 'smoking' example are both taken from Chalker & Weiner. With regard to the 'smoking' one, in the entry for 'gerund' they present it as evidence for the more nounlike versus more verblike uses of the -ing form as being on a cline rather than at all polar opposites. So they point out the determiner (My) and the NP before 'annoys', versus the object and adverbial that follow 'smoking', and the general retaining of its verbal meaning there. Lastly, I had a go at explaining the differences in VPs proper/Predicators versus Complements in those His hobby is collecting stamps cf. Now his sister also is collecting stamps sorts of examples here: http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=10665

[fluffyhamster]

Here as promised are the LGSWE stats regarding passive forms, Johnslat.

Generally, passives account for 25% of all finite verbs in academic prose, 15% in news, about 5% in fiction, and only about 2% in conversation. (Bonus, slightly paraphrasing: "The get passive is extremely rare", and "occurs only in conversation, except for an occasional example in colloquial fiction. Yet even in conversation, it accounts for only about 0.1% of all verbs, and so is even less common than the few be passives in this particular register. ..... [C]onversation...usually does not demote the subject, who is often the speaker").

Now for select specific details about short ("by-less") versus long passives:

[Teacher in Rome]

Sasha said:

[Sashadroogie]

I'm sticking with an ergative verb. Here's a handy definition:

https://www.google.ru/search?aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod=1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ergative+verbs+definition#hl=en&safe=off&q=ergative+verbs&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=5_zWT7CEE8Wl4gSP-IScBQ&ved=0CF4QkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=3917eac6b5e01079&biw=1280&bih=856

Easy example. "Sasha bounced the ball: the ball bounced."

So....

"..their branches bending..." (intransitive)

would equal "the wind/gravity/whatever bending their branches" (transitive)

All this talk of passive verbs, adjectival clauses - sheesh! Talk about over-complication. Even Hegel's sentence structure wouldn't be parsed so torturously.

[fluffyhamster]

[Sashadroogie]

This is true, Fluffy. But it's your thread, so according to Hegelian dialectics it's your thesis which produced the antithesis. Therefore by a torturous process of moral culpability analysis, you are equally responsible for the grammatical excesses displayed within.

The ergative synthesis I claim on behalf of the toiling masses.

[johnslat]

Dear Teacher in Rome,

Wouldn't "to meet the ground" be telling why (which would be personification / anthropomorphism) or how the branches are bending, which would make the infinitive phrase an adverbial one and not "a sort of object"?

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

[Sashadroogie]

What's IIRC? Infallible International Radical Communist?

[fluffyhamster]

I know what it means, but I wonder if or how it's pronounced - 'irk'?

[Sashadroogie]

Irked Sasha? I like it! Completely expresses how I felt when I looked upon my broken vodka bottles, their contents spilling to soak the floor...

[fluffyhamster]

Better their contents splishing to soaken the floor than glugging to unparchen your booze tube.

[Sashadroogie]

Arrrrggghhh!!! Sacrilege! What sort of thing is that for a TEFLer to say?!