What's the crack here?

zorro (3) · Post by **zorro (3)** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:46 pm

The Criminal Investigation Bureau on Friday took into custody a manager of a company that sold illegal software allowing those interested in obtaining private information to send unidentified SMS text messages to infect cellphones.

You don't normally take into custody someone, rather you take someone into custody.

Obviously there is interference with the defining relative clause, but isn't this unusual? Is take into custody a phrasal verb? If it is, it's usually a transitive verb, but here it's acting like an intransitive verb. Or am I breaking the clauses up in the wrong place.

I'm pretty sure this has something to do with subordinate clauses, but it's been a while since I did my masters and I've forgotten all the interesting stuff.

Please help.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:17 am

The crack, I suppose, is that we usually say take X into custody, but if X is a long item it becomes confusing and thus we are tempted to switch the positions for clarity.

zorro (3) · Post by **zorro (3)** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:50 am

Yes. I understand the reason for the switch, but there must be a more satisfactory linguistic explanation - or 'rule'

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:31 pm

"into custody" is a verb complement. Predicate adverbs normally follow objects. e.g.

Put the money "in a safe".
Give the book "to me".
Say something "to her".

Passive voiced versions of these double complemented predicates show that the predicate adverb can directly follow the verb.

The money was put in a safe.
The book was given to me.

I agree with woodcutter that it is not uncommon to switch the order of verb complements in order to avoid constructions like discontinuous relative clauses. However, you're right that there is no need to do so in your example sentence.

I suspect that many (older) journalists would consider your example an error in writing style, but I don't think it's a grammatical error.

zorro (3) · Post by **zorro (3)** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 3:12 pm

They put in a safe the money they had meticulously planned on stealing for the past several months, whilst under constant surveillance.

It does sound odd doesn't it.

Thanks for your responses though.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:57 pm

In this particular case the switch is more attractive because after "took" it isn't very clear the way the sentence is headed. I don't know that seeking some impressive over-arching rule is especially helpful - some long stuff gets confusing in some places, and the longer the worser!

Whatever adverbials do in general, isn't the relevant thing here verb+direct object+prepositional phrase?

If I said "I took into my house a cat" it sounds odd, but "I took into my house a huge cat with a tabby coat and festering wounds all over its hind legs" it sounds a little more plausible. It all depends on the particular construction, I think.

By the way, "What's the craic" is a rare case where you can find people being prescriptive about the spelling of dialect, but usage prefers "Whats the crack". Are you Irish, Zorro?

zorro (3) · Post by **zorro (3)** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:40 pm

I guess it comes down to context/register too really.

When speaking, I'd probably say 'I found a massive tabby with festering wounds and bought it into my house.'

The original quote was from a newspaper I believe, and would have looked better being made passive. It's one solution.

A manager of a company that sold illegal software allowing those interested in obtaining private information to send unidentified SMS text messages, was taken into custody.

Doesn't quite work with your cat example though

A massive tabby with festering wounds was found and bought into my house by me.

I'm not Irish, but the reason I titled my post 'What's the crack?' was the same reason you mentioned in your post.

I came across the written version for the first time 'What's the craic?' and didn't know for sure that this was the same as what I've always thought to be 'What's the crack?' I dictionary.comed 'craic' and it wasn't there, so gave up. I was probably distracted by a massive festering tabby that had wandered into my lounge!