Korean Job Discussion Forums

[raewon]

I have two questions about the following sentences:

Add to the beaker 50mL of water.
To the beaker add 50mL of water.

1) I've been asked if both sentences are correct (and why).

2) I've always thought that a space must be placed between a number and
the unit in the metric system. I checked some resources I have
(including the online MLA Handbook) but couldn't find anything. Is
the space indeed required?

Personally, I would write: Add 50 mL of water to the beaker.
But since I haven't been asked to reword the sentence, I guess that's
besides the point.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer with these questions.

[YTMND]

I am not sure about the ml issue, I would pick one writing style you like and promote that.

As for the sentence question, "add to" is a two part verb, so you can't start a sentence with the second part. It would be like saying, "In the bag I put the books." or "Under the bridge I walked."

The second one sounds more plausible I think because "walk under" can not be split like "add to" and "put in".

1. Add _ to_. OK
2. Put _in_. OK
3. Walk_under. WRONG

[Charlie Bourque]

Is this a trick question?

Add 50ml of water to the beaker.

[RK12]

Add 50mL of water to the beaker.

OR

To the beaker, add 50mL of water.

NOT "*Add to the beaker 50mL of water".

Add is a verb and thus part of a verb phrase. A verb phrase comprises of a verb and then what is dependent on the verb if it applies. The prepositional phrase is not dependent on add, but the noun phrase of "50mL of water" is. So, in order to make a complete verb phrase with that thought "Add 50mL of water". Then more info on where the water was added could be put in a prepositional phrase which could occur in either the front of the sentence or the end of the sentence.

If you have problems with sentence construction, I recommend getting an intro to linguistics book or a syntax book.

[lichtarbeiter]

To answer the OP's questions:

1) The default structure of this sentence is as follows: "Add 50 mL of water to the beaker."

Your first sentence involves rightward movement of the object noun phrase. In my judgment, this is an acceptable sentence. English allows "heavy" (long) object noun phrases to be shifted to the end of the sentence. However, other speakers might feel that "50 mL of water" is not a "heavy" enough noun phrase to permit movement.

Your second sentence involves leftward movement of the prepositional phrase to the front of the sentence. This movement is not controversial, making the sentence definitely acceptable.

2) I think you'll find that both variations are commonly used. I don't think it's the object of your assignment.

___________________________________________________________

RK12's analysis is insightful, but ultimately incorrect.

The prepositional phrase "to the beaker" in fact does exist within the verb phrase (as an adjunct). Because this is an imperative (where underlying subjects are eliminated in the surface structure), the entire surface sentence is part of the same VP.

The fact that the adverbial can exist at the rightmost or leftmost position of the sentence does not mean it's not part of the VP. Many types of constituents under the deep structure's VP can be moved outside the VP in the surface structure.

Also, be careful to ensure that the logical process of your analysis does not run backwards. Linguists do not prescribe correctness/incorrectness of linguistic features based on what they think a grammatical structure allows or doesn't allow. Instead, they observe data (what speakers of a language commonly say) which are presumed correct merely by the virtue that they exist. Their analysis is then geared towards how a grammatical structure accommodates this "correct" linguistic data.

To me, the sentence "Add to the beaker 50 mL of water" doesn't sound unnatural at all. There are, in fact, several cases where a verb can be separated from its complement by a prepositional phrase:

"Put in this box everything that's important to you."
"He knew all too well the dangers of rock climbing."

However:
"Add to the beaker water." (x)
"Put in this box your keys." (x)
"He knew well the answers." (x)

As I've mentioned, English has a process known as "Heavy NP Shift." Because the aforementioned "correct" sentences contain relatively "heavy" noun phrases as objects, they can be moved rightward for the purpose of emphasis (known as focalization). However, "light" NPs are not permitted to undergo this type of movement.

As for a more technical explanation of the grammatical process, the theory is that in the surface structure that NP moves from the complement slot of V-bar to occupy the specifier slot of the PP.

Because we cannot account for the disparity between the acceptable and unacceptable sentences purely through syntactic analysis, this becomes a question that needs to be addressed by the lexis-syntax interface (that is to say, constituents contain lexical features that may or may not accommodate such movement).

[The Cosmic Hum]

^ That was one impressively eloquent reply.
Thanks for that.
Cheers.