get + ?

lucy lace · Post by **lucy lace** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:00 pm

Here is a sentence from the textbook I use in my teacher training course:

"The activities are designed to get the students using the language."

I have a high-level Korean couple who are planning on opening a private language school in the future, and they are very particular about learning every nuance/rule/situation regarding grammar. Their question regarding this particular example sentence is the -ing form of "use" following the causative "get." They want to know why the sentence doesn't read "The activities are designed to get the students to use the language." My off-the-cuff explanation was that there is an ommitted "to be" (as in "to be using") which emphasises the continuous action of the language use.

They now want to know the name of this grammar point, and where they can find activities in grammar books to practice it. Sigh.

Any suggestions?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:00 pm

Ask them if they know the expression "get something going" or "get something moving".

"I can't get the car going this morning. I think the engine's frozen."

"Come on, get going. We haven't got all day."

get something going = get something started

Focus is on the initial stage.

lucy lace · Post by **lucy lace** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:15 am

I can think of many examples, although your examples are a lot less clumsy and a lot more natural than mine. This construction also works with "want": I want you drinking lots of water.

But what do I call it? Causative plus infinitive plus progressive??? or plus gerund??? What key words do I type into Google?

My trouble is that my students have a fairly high understanding of prescriptive grammar, whereas I have a fair-to-middling understanding of descriptive grammar. I can figure out what is happening and why, I can even draw the pretty sentence tree to explain it, but I have no idea what it is called, nor where to send them to practice it.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:30 am

"get" +to ...... is "persuade"

"get" + .......ing is "start"

"Can you get the car going?" seems to not involve difficulty, whereas "Can you get the car to go?" does. Does the one with ...ing sit better with things (or people treated as things "get them talking") while the "to......." goes better with people (or anthropomorphically things treated as people eg my car)?

Tell them that it's called "Lucy's causative get" which it may be for all I know.

(Andrew, if you read this, "have them do it later" is a bare infinitive (like let, make, help). Modality sweating from every pore. Did we spot that one?)

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:13 am

"Can you get the car going?" seems to not involve difficulty, whereas "Can you get the car to go?"

Then how about:

"I can't get the car going."
"I can't get the car to go."

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:22 am

Good point. But what about:

I can't get the guest to leave

* I can't get the guest leaving

I'm getting lost here

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:44 pm

JuanTwoThree wrote:
* I can't get the guest leaving

< I can't get the guest leaving >

As he's leaving. At the moment he's leaving. ?????

lucy lace · Post by **lucy lace** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:51 pm

I can't get the guest leaving: in some teenage dialects, this means, I don't understand why the guest left.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:11 pm

lucy lace wrote:I can't get the guest leaving: in some teenage dialects, this means, I don't understand why the guest left.

Not only teenage dialects. I often use "can't get" for "can't understand". Don't you?
Similar:

I can't understand her leaving (like that).

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:19 am

Yes, I can see "I can't get the guest leaving" as "I don't understand the guest leaving" : "get" as in "get a joke".

But it's wandering away from

"I can't get the car going."
"I can't get the car to go."

"I can't get the guest to leave"
"I can't get the guest leaving"

I can see how the last works. It ,makesthe guest sound like a machine, dehumanizing the guest while "get the car to go" humanizes the car:"I can't persuade the car to go".

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:21 am

Let's just accept that "get going" = "begin", "start" or "leave" and is probably not grammatical but lexical.