Job Discussion Forums

[Willy_In_Japan]

[Moore]

I think the answer is that "love", though a verb, is like a "limit adjective": you can say something is VERY/QUITE big, but not that something is VERY/QUITE enormous, because "enormous" is a limit adjective i.e. either something�s enormous or it�s just very big - it�s the same with "love": you can REALLY/QUITE like strawberries, but you can�t VERY MUCH/QUITE love something as "love" is at an extreme end of the scale:if you want to modify "enormous" you need a more powerful modifier and so you say it is ABSOLUTELY enormous and likewise with love, you�d probably say you TOTALLY or ABSOLUTELY love someone/thing.
Of course you can always fall back on a phrase I often use to my students and have to use on myself when I�m trying to say something in a foreign language which to me is a logical way of saying it but isn�t used is "Logically you should be able to say that, but people just don�t." ...or does that make me just a cr*p teacher..?

[guest of Japan]

You haven't discovered such a rule and you certainly have not proven that one exists.

"Mr. Brown, I love your daughter very much."
"I love her very much."

A: You got a new car?
B: Yeah it's amazing. I love it so much.
A: What kind of car is it?
B: A ferrari.
A: No wonder you love it so much.

He sat red-fingered in the kitchen, his eyes guilt-ridden. His wife stood with her fists clenched in anger at having found her gluttonous husband devouring the most important ingredient for their sons birthday dinner.
He looked up sheepishly. His wife stared down, "Which do you love more, your son or strawberries?" "I love them both very much" he responded. To which she retorted, "Perhaps tonight you'll love the couch very much, too."

[Moore]

I stand corrected! The thing is though, I�d still never say "I love strawberries very much" but, for example "I really love strawberries". You�re right Guest of Japan, but I defend my thought that sometimes, though something may be logical grammatically, people simply don�t put things in certain ways which is why I encourage my students to expose themselves to as many sources of "native" English possible in order to get a feel for the way ideas are usually expressed.

[stillnosheep]

What is all this rubbish about 'I love sandcastles (or whatever) very much' sounding wrong as 'love' is an absolute and therefore unqualifiable. Rubbish.

Guest of Japan is right.

We tend to use 'I love .......very (or so) much' when talking of our love for particular instances of a person or a thing (eg I love {Fred, that house, those strawberries} very much) and use 'very much' (as opposed to 'so much') when we want to stress just how very much love we have for that (those) particular person(s) or thing(s).

'I really love ....' is used in a more general fashion, both for stressing our love for particular instances (Fred, this house, that chair, these strawberries) and for general cases or categories of people or things (men, houses, chairs, strawberries in general, etc).

[Moore]

I love sandcastles very much
I love my car very much
I love strawberries very much

.....I don�t know where you come from, but with all respect, where I come from that sounds really strange: "I love your daughter very much", certainly, and "I love my car SO much" doesn�t sound wrong either, but the previous examples, absolutely not normal, sorry.

[guest of Japan]

Moore, your post was not there when I was typing my last post. I was responding to Willy and his made-up grammar rule.

I too believe that "I love strawberries very much" sounds unnatural, but that it is not grammatically wrong.

[TokyoLiz]

I'd have to agree with Guest that the contentious sentence is not in fact wrong. At my school, we get into long winded debates about form and usage in the senior high textbooks. The texts are filled with unnatural and archaic usage. Fortunately for our students, the English teachers consult us frequently about form and use and we see the weird English. One teacher makes a point of telling his students that the offending expression in the textbook is correct but literary/archaic and reminds the kids not to use it in conversation.

Of course, if you're at jr high, this compromise is over their heads, eh? You're stuck with 40 juniors chanting "I love Anpanman very much" whether you like it or not because it's in the textbook. Feh.

[stillnosheep]

Guest, Moore, Liz,

I think we are all in agreement here.

Whereas 'I really love .... (sandcastles/my dog)' always sounds OK. I love (my car/that dog/Freda) only sounds OK when referring to a particular instance (or class of instances within a larger class - eg. those houses).

This is probably because when referring to a particular instance (or sub-set of instances) the qualifier 'very' is a natural means of distinguishing our (greater) love for (Freda/that dog/those houses) from our (lesser)love for (Frederica/that other dog/those other houses).

In other words we can (naturally) use the qualifier 'very much' when distinguishing between different degrees of love.

And to those who argue that one cannot in English legitimately talk of greater or lesser degrees of love because love is some kind of absolute limit per se: Have you never heard of the old saying that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's fellow man?

sns

[king kakipi]

what about the DEPTH of one`s love of strawberries?.............and whilst we are on the subject, why are persimmons, which I TRULY hate, cheaper than strawberries (which I love so much).......?

[J.]

Persimmons are now in season; strawberries are out. Try eating lots in the spring or summer when they're cheap...or throw some in your freezer for later, if you love them so much.

Seems to me it's about context and meaning. Grammatically correct can still produce some strange English. I try to steer my students to natural-sounding English. That's when I can remember what natural sounds like. The longer I'm here, the less defined that becomes.