Teacher Discussion Forums

Where they can't seem to figure this out, either.

"I did nothing but stare at them."

Why is it "stare" not "stared"?

This doesn't seem to be a simple case of the past shown by "did" as "did" appears to be the main verb here.

Allow me to make a little change to begin with:

They did nothing but stare at us.

This, I think we'll all agree, means something like "They stared intensely at us, and we found this strange and somewhat unnerving". (Imagine the little boy from The Grudge appearing in your children's class...oh, sorry, I didn't know your average student was like that!).

Compare this with:

They did nothing (,) but stared at us.

This creates a slightly comical effect in my mind. I find it hard to imagine a suitable context, but one possible one is somebody explaining to a policeman they've called out how heinous a crime staring is; that is, there is a "conflict" between saying they did nothing, and saying they (and note that the subject is ellipted before the second verb) stared at us (oh how nasty of them!).

If the second meaning is what is actually intended then perhaps something like, 'OK, they didn't really do anything, but they did stare at us, which I found very unnerving, so please arrest them, I think they're stalkers, and pssst by the way here's $100 to see to it', or even 'But they STARED at us, officer!' would be better. (For suspects already on the police's hitlist a "useful" witness might say something like: 'Oh, they did nothing...but oh wait a minute, they DID stare at us...maybe because we work in a bank/the embassy/etc. Can I go now?').

Getting back to 'I did nothing but stare at them', this could be:

1) your reporting how you attempted to unnerve some people (perhaps you like entertaining people with your daring ecapades e.g. you are a writer and this is your writing)

2) your protestation of innocence as the police haul you away, you stalker you!

In the case of 1), you could of course say 'I stared at them intensely for ten minutes in order to unnerve them', but you would hardly be likely to make 'stare' finite in the context of 2) (then you would most likely say you were doing nothing, and that's/was all).

After all the above "fun", 'did nothing but stare' seems to be a "delexical" lexical phrase that simply means 'stare', and imagining it is a co-ordinated series of structures allowing two finite elements seems a little silly if not pointless.

Basically, teach students to say:

They did nothing
OR
(They did something -) They stared at us (either involving only ONE finite verb),

and only then perhaps show them an example such as:

They did nothing but stare at us.

That last example is obviously quite different from relating a sequence of events in a lengthier, connected report ("news", gossip, story or anecdote etc).

DON'T teach them phrases like They did nothing but stared at us unless you are prepared to potentially waste a lot of time possibly confusing everybody with imagined (imaginary?) contexts like the above (that is, necessarily expanding on the sentence with extra context), the "finer" (not so stylish) punctuation involved in "writing" etc etc.

"He does nothing but stare at me" behaves in the same way.

It might be seen as another way of saying "He doesn't/didn't do anything but stare at me" where there is a bare infinitive for the "stare" to echo.

Certainly, using "he", "she" or "it" helps to determine that "stare" is the infinitive and not the present. The only way to be sure is to use the verb to be.

This doesn't work exactly with this structure, but a similar structure would be:

He's a security guard so he doesn't have to do anything but be there.

I don't think "have to" alters anything here, although I suppose it's just possible that it might. This seems add greater evidence that "stare" is the infinitive.

So much for proving that it IS the infinitive, what I'd like to know is WHY it is.

He's a security guard (there), so he just walks around straightening the displays and helping old ladies with their shopping.

Andrew Patterson wrote:So much for proving that it IS the infinitive, what I'd like to know is WHY it is.

Maybe read my above (lengthy) post (again? )?

Isn't there something more grammaticalised than a lexical phrase happening here? After all it's more productive/generative than many fixed expressions. Look at "What he does is (to) stare at everybody" where in this case the "to" seems to be optional. The various forms mentioned (He did nothing but stare, He didn't do anything but stare, He does nothing but stare, What he does is (to) stare etc) are obviously related but that "to" is a subtle change which smells (to me at least) like....... Grammar!

Maybe a synthesis of the following with the Hamsters long post may give the answer, is fronting involved too?

I also agree that there is sth more gramaticalised than a lexical phrase happening here, Juan.

Using "he", "she" or "it" helps to determine that "stare" is the infinitive and not the present. The only way to be sure is to use the verb to be.

This doesn't work exactly with this structure, but a similar structure would be:

He's a security guard so he doesn't have to do anything but be there.

I don't think "have to" alters anything here, although I suppose it's just possible that it might. This seems add greater evidence that "stare" is the infinitive.

I cannot accept, though, that "did" is an auxiliary, though, and this can be proved because it is possible to rewrite the sentence using the present perfect with "done" as the past participle:

He has done nothing all day but stare at the wall.

This website may be of help:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learn ... v226.shtml

You may want to look at it to see if you can get anything else out of it, but what appears to be the most relevent section reads:

There are one or two other structures where to-infinitive and the bare infinitive are both possible. Expressions with do or did, such as what I've done or all I did can follow either pattern.

I hate shopping so what I've done is (to) order a new computer over the Internet.

All I did was (to) suggest that she should lend him no more money. I didn't insist on it.
When two infinitive structures are connected by and, or or, except or but and than or as, it is normal practice to omit to in the second clause. Compare the following:

I would like you to tidy the house and (to) wash the dishes before I get home.

Would you prefer to have a snack now or (to) wait until later before we eat?

I could find nothing to do this afternoon, except read my book.
My son does nothing but watch TV when he gets home from school.

It's quicker to bike to the station rather than take the car.

I have to fix breakfast for everybody as well as take the children to school before I can leave for work.

The question is, why is it the bare infinitive? Why not, as Meg asked, the past simple, and why not the gerund? After all, we say:

She's interested in nothing but skiing; not
*She's interested in nothing but ski.

Maybe the verb after 'but' is determined by what goes before it. So: 'did...stare' and 'is interested in...skiing' and 'doesn't have to...be'.

But the present perfect example does not seem to accept this analysis.

The question is do we view the sentence:
"He did nothing but stare," as one or two clauses?

If it's two clauses joined by "but" then "did" is the main verb, no questions asked, if it's one clause, we could be looking at a type of complementation. Does anyone detect any mood/modality (overlay of meaning) here?

I can almost see this as one and a half clauses.

I ((did) nothing but*) stared at them.

He has ((done) nothing but*) stared at the wall (all day).

She's (only) interested in (nothing but) skiing (and only skiing).

*Could use 'just' here to mean 'nothing but', especially in second example; in first, how about a little (re)lexicalization: I stared at them intently/piercingly/menacingly, for hours non-stop, until they'd finished discussing whatever obscure grammar point and were getting up to leave the restaurant.

I know I overuse brackets, but I like them (and sometimes they're quite helpful).

Fluffy, surely the problem revolves round why it isn't "I did nothing but stared at them".

Andrew, I take your point that the present perfect moves one well away from do as auxiliary:

"All he's ever done is stare at the wall"

to paraphrase your "He has done nothing all day but stare at the wall".

Interestingly it seems that we can have a bare infinitive as subject:
"Stare at the wall is all he's ever done" seems reasonable to me.

Inevitably the bare infinitive raises the spectre of modality. Putting the cat among the netives, I've mentioned before that "do" is the tenth modal verb, but only in jest. But if auxiliary "do" takes the bare infinitive then why not full "do"? And who's to say which is the chicken, and which the egg?

JuanTwoThree wrote:Fluffy, surely the problem revolves round why it isn't "I did nothing but stared at them".

Well, I guess to me, there isn't really a problem here. I've pointed out that having the two conjoined finites 'did nothing' and (but) 'stared' makes little sense discoursally and/or functionally, whereas viewing it as a lexical phrase makes enough sense generally and (therefore) grammatically too.

Taking the troublesome 'nothing but' out of the picture, who would find 'I didn't stared at them' grammatical (to which we might contrast, 'I did stare at them (so)!' > 'I stared at them').

JuanTwoThree wrote:Isn't there something more grammaticalised than a lexical phrase happening here? After all it's more productive/generative than many fixed expressions. Look at "What he does is (to) stare at everybody" where in this case the "to" seems to be optional. The various forms mentioned (He did nothing but stare, He didn't do anything but stare, He does nothing but stare, What he does is (to) stare etc) are obviously related but that "to" is a subtle change which smells (to me at least) like....... Grammar!

When I say 'It's a lexical phrase' I don't mean to say that grammatical processes are entirely dead (i.e. not alive and well) within it, not involved in the processes of its construction - that would be silly; what I am saying in a coded and shorthand way is that there isn't much more we can profitably read into the analysis beyond what we can see (WYSIWYG). That is, I simply accept what I see if it seems natural and don't question its validity or what it is telling me about the grammar involved (which is quite different from chucking the item into an "offending" or "totally uninteresting" "performance bin", as Chomsky might, so he can get back to playing with his embedded sentences that are many orders removed from the real complexities of meaning in use i.e. function); and from what I can see, the item under consideration seems fine and pretty much makes sense as it is.

I would generally prefer to get the function right and straight in my mind for attested forms than get the form right for forms that would remain confined to pretty much just my mind. I am not in(to) linguistics in order to exhaust my rather limited mental faculties and abilities, but rather, in order to find things that can be applied or hold out some hope of application or "synthesizing, ordering power", and sometimes grammar pure and "simple" just doesn't do it for me.

OK, people, what do you make of anything/everything but...? Do they have anything in common?

Just a thought.

Lolwhites wrote:

OK, people, what do you make of anything/everything but...? Do they have anything in common?

Well, the grammar is the same:
eg He will do anything but work.