| Author |
Message |
Ra Eun-A
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 1:02 pm
Post subject: Usage of preposition. |
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I want to know USAGE OF PREPOSITION. Some verbs need to use some
prepositons. But some verbs don't need to use some prepositon.
Some verbs don't use prepositons all the time.
Some sentences that use some prepositions or don't use have a same
meaning.
Ex) We rammed the fence. We rammed into the fence.
We fled the house. We fled from the house.
We swerved across the road. (prep. required)
We left from home. We left home. (these mean two different
things.)
We ran into the house (prep required)
We ran through a red light. We ran a red light.
What is diversity concerning these sentences' meaning? Why do some
verbs want some prepositions?
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Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 2:00 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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What would help you is understanding direct objects and indirect
objects.
And yes, when the same verb takes a direct object in one sentence and
then in another sentence takes an indirect object instead, the meaning
of the verb will be different in a usually very subtle way. |
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Robert Lieblich
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 4:00 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Ra Eun-A wrote:
| Quote: |
I want to know USAGE OF PREPOSITION. Some verbs need to use some
prepositons. But some verbs don't need to use some prepositon.
Some verbs don't use prepositons all the time.
Some sentences that use some prepositions or don't use have a same
meaning.
Ex) We rammed the fence. We rammed into the fence.
We fled the house. We fled from the house.
We swerved across the road. (prep. required)
We left from home. We left home. (these mean two different
things.)
We ran into the house (prep required)
We ran through a red light. We ran a red light.
What is diversity concerning these sentences' meaning? Why do some
verbs want some prepositions?
|
Ignore anyone who tells you that learning rules will help you anmswer
those questions. The simple fact is that the use (and non-use) of
prepositions in English is not governed by rules. Each verb works
with certain prepositions and not others. And most verbs can work
with several different prepositions, each of which differently affects
the meaning of what is said. You can no more learn a rule for this
than you can learn a rule for determining the gender of a noun in
languages that have noun gender, or a rule for determining which
English verbs are weak and which are strong.
The only solution is to learn, verb by verb, the permissible
prepositions and the other syntax of each verb. A good
English-language dictionary will tell you the syntax of each English
verb. (American dictionaries do not tell you this and therefore are
almost useless for EFL students.)
As for direct and indirect objects, brought up by another poster, some
verbs work with direct objects, others with indirect, and still others
with both. Again, you have to deal with each verb separately. There
is no rule that will tell you.
Good luck.
--
Bob Lieblich
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Ritsuko Murata
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 12:39 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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"Ra Eun-A" <RaEunA@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1129446155.227962.172180@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
| Quote: | I want to know USAGE OF PREPOSITION. Some verbs need to use some
prepositons. But some verbs don't need to use some prepositon.
Some verbs don't use prepositons all the time.
I agree with the previous posters. There are no rules, but an understanding |
of direct and indirect objects might help you.
In your examples:
| Quote: | We rammed the fence. We rammed into the fence.
Out of context, the first rather suggests you did it intentionally.
We fled the house. We fled from the house.
Both are fine. In England the first is heard a little less often these days |
I think.
| Quote: | We swerved across the road. (prep. required)
Yes - a preposition is needed there. In recent usage one might swerve a |
ball or a car, but never a road. You can swerve to avoid something, swerve
around or away from something.
| Quote: | We left from home. We left home. (these mean two different
things.)
Yes. The first example stresses your departure-point.
We ran into the house (prep required)
Yes. If you ran the house you were its managers.
We ran through a red light. We ran a red light.
The first is fine as long as you're on foot. To run somewhere in a car is a |
little old fashioned. The second is wrong.
| Quote: | What is diversity concerning these sentences' meaning? Why do some
verbs want some prepositions?
|
(Or 'How do these sentences differ in meaning? Why do some verbs take
prepositions?')
Ritz |
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William
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:43 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Ritsuko Murata wrote:
| Quote: | "Ra Eun-A" <RaEunA@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1129446155.227962.172180@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
We fled the house. We fled from the house.
Both are fine. In England the first is heard a little less often these days
I think.
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But in Wales, it is used all the time?
--
WH |
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Weatherlawyer
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:23 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Ra Eun-A wrote:
Some of the following are colloquialisms or cliches made up from
"everyday speech."
| Quote: | We rammed the fence. We rammed into the fence.
|
A totally alien concept to those of the days before cars -or later
still perhaps: Ram Raiders.
| Quote: | We fled the house. We fled from the house.
|
As is the above. Normal people never used to flee the house especially
in films where Tom Mix was the star. Then all of a sudden the cliche
was for house and home to lack safety somehow in this modern age.
So these days the full description has a cliche'd shorthand.
| Quote: | We swerved across the road. (prep. required)
|
Here, the short form is "We swerved" as all the readers will know you
were on a road.
| Quote: | We left from home. We left home (these mean two different things.)
|
Further explanation is required with these, as they can also mean the
same same thing. They mean "anything" subject to context.
| Quote: | Why do some verbs want some prepositions?
|
Again it boils down to context. A cliche' contains its own context. |
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Odysseus
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:30 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Ritsuko Murata wrote:
| Quote: |
"Ra Eun-A" <RaEunA@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1129446155.227962.172180@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
snip |
| Quote: | We swerved across the road. (prep. required)
Yes - a preposition is needed there. In recent usage one might swerve a
ball or a car, but never a road. You can swerve to avoid something, swerve
around or away from something.
|
The reason a preposition is required is that the verb "to swerve" is
intransitive, i.e. it can't have an object.
| Quote: | We left from home. We left home. (these mean two different
things.)
Yes. The first example stresses your departure-point.
|
The latter sometimes means a change of residence, moving out of one's
parents' house perhaps, or away from one's birthplace, while the
former can only refer to a particular journey.
| Quote: | We ran into the house (prep required)
Yes. If you ran the house you were its managers.
We ran through a red light. We ran a red light.
The first is fine as long as you're on foot. To run somewhere in a car is a
little old fashioned. The second is wrong.
|
"To run a (red) light" is a common idiom, at least in North America.
It's colloquial but I don't see any justification to label it
"wrong". Cf. the long-established expressions "to run a blockade" and
"to run the gauntlet", both of which use "run" transitively with
similar meanings.
--
Odysseus |
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Richard R. Hershberger
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:13 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Robert Lieblich wrote:
| Quote: | As for direct and indirect objects, brought up by another poster, some
verbs work with direct objects, others with indirect, and still others
with both. Again, you have to deal with each verb separately. There
is no rule that will tell you.
|
Has the terminology changed while I wasn't looking? Lots of people
have been mentioning indirect objects, but the examples I have seen
don't involve indirect objects as I understand the term. Take this
example:
We rammed the fence/We rammed into the fence.
As I understand grammatical vocabulary, both sentences have a
complement to the verb. In the first the complement is in the form of
a direct object. In the second it is in the form of a prepositional
phrase. Neither is anything at all like an indirect object, unless
they have gone and redefined the term.
Richard R. Hershberger |
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Don Phillipson
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:05 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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"Ra Eun-A" <RaEunA@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1129446155.227962.172180@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | I want to know USAGE OF PREPOSITION. Some verbs need to use some
prepositons. But some verbs don't need to use some prepositon.
Some verbs don't use prepositons all the time. . . . Why do some
verbs want some prepositions?
|
There is no short or easy answer . . .
Does your home language have verbs that decline
fully (like Latin, Greek, German) ? French and English
have only two noun cases (subjective = nominative and
objective) -- therefore they need prepositions to express
in four words what German can say in three words, e.g.
Give it to me = Gibt es mir. (This is literary English.
People also say "Give it me.")
There are many more (more complex) possibilities.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada) |
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Pat Durkin
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:28 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@acme.com> wrote in message
news:1129562006.031380.56100@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: |
Robert Lieblich wrote:
As for direct and indirect objects, brought up by another poster, some
verbs work with direct objects, others with indirect, and still others
with both. Again, you have to deal with each verb separately. There
is no rule that will tell you.
Has the terminology changed while I wasn't looking? Lots of people
have been mentioning indirect objects, but the examples I have seen
don't involve indirect objects as I understand the term. Take this
example:
We rammed the fence/We rammed into the fence.
As I understand grammatical vocabulary, both sentences have a
complement to the verb. In the first the complement is in the form of
a direct object. In the second it is in the form of a prepositional
phrase. Neither is anything at all like an indirect object, unless
they have gone and redefined the term.
|
Time for a lesson here, at least for me.
I find the use of "complement" very ambiguous. The expression "She read me
the book" is using indirect object before direct object, is it not?
Well I learned that "She read the book to me" expresses the indirect object
_in a prepositional phrase_. In other words. the function of "indirect
object" as part of a sentence is one thing, no matter how it is couched.
The use of "prepositional phrase" as part of sentence structure is
understood. The noun-object-of-the-preposition is still indirectly the
object of the verb.
I come from an era in which sentences (and clauses)were : Subject and
predicate. Subject: Noun or pronoun or phrase (could include another
clause, of course) which acts or is acted upon (passive voice). Predicate:
verb + anything else the pre-identified subject acts upon, or in any way or
time or place.
Am I just restating the whole thing in other terms?
Sounds as though you, Richard (and others), had a different teacher.
Pat |
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 11:22 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Don Phillipson spake thusly:
| Quote: | "Ra Eun-A" <RaEunA@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1129446155.227962.172180@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
I want to know USAGE OF PREPOSITION. Some verbs need to use some
prepositons. But some verbs don't need to use some prepositon.
Some verbs don't use prepositons all the time. . . . Why do some
verbs want some prepositions?
There is no short or easy answer . . .
Does your home language have verbs that decline
fully (like Latin, Greek, German) ? French and English
have only two noun cases (subjective = nominative and
objective) -- therefore they need prepositions to express
in four words what German can say in three words, e.g.
Give it to me = Gibt es mir. (This is literary English.
People also say "Give it me.")
|
I also might occasionally say "Give me it".
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the |
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Robert Lieblich
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:27 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Pat Durkin wrote:
| Quote: |
"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@acme.com> wrote in message
news:1129562006.031380.56100@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Robert Lieblich wrote:
As for direct and indirect objects, brought up by another poster, some
verbs work with direct objects, others with indirect, and still others
with both. Again, you have to deal with each verb separately. There
is no rule that will tell you.
Has the terminology changed while I wasn't looking? Lots of people
have been mentioning indirect objects, but the examples I have seen
don't involve indirect objects as I understand the term. Take this
example:
We rammed the fence/We rammed into the fence.
As I understand grammatical vocabulary, both sentences have a
complement to the verb. In the first the complement is in the form of
a direct object. In the second it is in the form of a prepositional
phrase. Neither is anything at all like an indirect object, unless
they have gone and redefined the term.
Time for a lesson here, at least for me.
I find the use of "complement" very ambiguous. The expression "She read me
the book" is using indirect object before direct object, is it not?
Well I learned that "She read the book to me" expresses the indirect object
_in a prepositional phrase_. In other words. the function of "indirect
object" as part of a sentence is one thing, no matter how it is couched.
The use of "prepositional phrase" as part of sentence structure is
understood. The noun-object-of-the-preposition is still indirectly the
object of the verb.
I come from an era in which sentences (and clauses)were : Subject and
predicate. Subject: Noun or pronoun or phrase (could include another
clause, of course) which acts or is acted upon (passive voice). Predicate:
verb + anything else the pre-identified subject acts upon, or in any way or
time or place.
Am I just restating the whole thing in other terms?
Sounds as though you, Richard (and others), had a different teacher.
|
It's a vexing topic. Old-timers (if this NG has any) may remember
when Eric Walker and I went fifteen rounds on the subject of the
dative case in English. It's all there in Google, and you can
probably find it by searching /walker lieblich dative/. Eric was of
the view that anything that expresses an indirect object is in the
dative case, even if it is morphologically indistinguishable [1] from
the nominative or accusative. Consider these three sentences:
1. Sarah received the book from John
2. John likes Sarah
3. John gave Sarah the book
4. John gave the book to Sarah
To Eric, "Sarah" is nominative in 1, accusative in 2, and dative in
both 3 and 4. And yet the form never varies. Since even The Brothers
Fowler, as far back as *The King's English*, said that "Sarah" was in
the common case and there is no dative, etc., I thought Eric, who I
though worshipped Fowler, might agree with my argument that the label
"dative" serves no purpose in the analysis of English. No such luck.
As a sort of subplot, we also got into the issue of what an indirect
object is. Eric had little trouble with this: if it's in the dative
it's the indirect object. I pointed out that the way you know an
English word is in the dative (assuming you believe that "dative' has
any meaning in English) is that it has the function of direct object,
so saying that what's in the dative is the direct object is at best a
truism. I don't remember Eric's rejoinder, but as I recall, it made a
lot of sense until you read it closely.
After much browbeating, Eric finally, grudgingly allowed that one
could analyze sentences like the ones under discussion without ever
mentioning the dative. I took this as a validation of my argument
that "dative" was a meaningless concept in the grammar of the English
language[2]. Eric took it as a sign that the barbarians had already
destroyed the gate and were flooding into the keep.
Oh, the indirect object. AFAIAC, the term is the label for a noun or
pronoun positioned between a ditransitive verb (one that can take both
an indirect object and a direct object) and the direct object. (In
older English the order of objects could be reversed -- "Give it me"
-- but that's no longer a productive construction.) When a noun or
pronoun follows a preposition, it's the object of the preposition and
cannot be the direct object. This is a matter of syntax, not
meaning. So in "John gave Sarah the book," Sarah is the indirect
object. In "John gave the book to Sarah," Sarah is the object of the
preposition "to."
I acknowledge that many knowledgeable people consider "Sarah" in "John
gave the book to Sarah" to be an indirect object. (Some of these
knowledgeable people also worship at the Church of the Dative; others
do not.) I disagree on this point, and I think my reasoning is
superior, but it's not worth fighting over, even with Eric Walker.
That's my story and I'm stuck with it.
[1] Now there's a phrase I don't get to write every day.
[2] I did not then, nor do I now, contend that analogizing indirect
objects to datives in other languages serves no purpose, but the
purpose is to help ESL students learn the grammar of English by
analogy, not to apply foreign grammatical terms to an analysis of
English.
--
Bob Lieblich
As dative as the next guy |
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Pat Durkin
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:01 am
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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"Robert Lieblich" <robert.lieblich@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:43542563.369ECFE4@verizon.net...
| Quote: | Pat Durkin wrote:
Time for a lesson here, at least for me.
I find the use of "complement" very ambiguous. The expression "She read
me
the book" is using indirect object before direct object, is it not?
Well I learned that "She read the book to me" expresses the indirect
object
_in a prepositional phrase_. In other words. the function of "indirect
object" as part of a sentence is one thing, no matter how it is couched.
The use of "prepositional phrase" as part of sentence structure is
understood. The noun-object-of-the-preposition is still indirectly the
object of the verb.
I come from an era in which sentences (and clauses)were : Subject and
predicate. Subject: Noun or pronoun or phrase (could include another
clause, of course) which acts or is acted upon (passive voice).
Predicate:
verb + anything else the pre-identified subject acts upon, or in any way
or
time or place.
Am I just restating the whole thing in other terms?
Sounds as though you, Richard (and others), had a different teacher.
It's a vexing topic. Old-timers (if this NG has any) may remember
when Eric Walker and I went fifteen rounds on the subject of the
dative case in English. It's all there in Google, and you can
probably find it by searching /walker lieblich dative/. Eric was of
the view that anything that expresses an indirect object is in the
dative case, even if it is morphologically indistinguishable [1] from
the nominative or accusative. Consider these three sentences:
1. Sarah received the book from John
2. John likes Sarah
3. John gave Sarah the book
4. John gave the book to Sarah
To Eric, "Sarah" is nominative in 1, accusative in 2, and dative in
both 3 and 4. And yet the form never varies. Since even The Brothers
Fowler, as far back as *The King's English*, said that "Sarah" was in
the common case and there is no dative, etc., I thought Eric, who I
though worshipped Fowler, might agree with my argument that the label
"dative" serves no purpose in the analysis of English. No such luck.
As a sort of subplot, we also got into the issue of what an indirect
object is. Eric had little trouble with this: if it's in the dative
it's the indirect object. I pointed out that the way you know an
English word is in the dative (assuming you believe that "dative' has
any meaning in English) is that it has the function of direct object,
so saying that what's in the dative is the direct object is at best a
truism. I don't remember Eric's rejoinder, but as I recall, it made a
lot of sense until you read it closely.
After much browbeating, Eric finally, grudgingly allowed that one
could analyze sentences like the ones under discussion without ever
mentioning the dative. I took this as a validation of my argument
that "dative" was a meaningless concept in the grammar of the English
language[2]. Eric took it as a sign that the barbarians had already
destroyed the gate and were flooding into the keep.
Oh, the indirect object. AFAIAC, the term is the label for a noun or
pronoun positioned between a ditransitive verb (one that can take both
an indirect object and a direct object) and the direct object. (In
older English the order of objects could be reversed -- "Give it me"
-- but that's no longer a productive construction.) When a noun or
pronoun follows a preposition, it's the object of the preposition and
cannot be the direct object. This is a matter of syntax, not
meaning. So in "John gave Sarah the book," Sarah is the indirect
object. In "John gave the book to Sarah," Sarah is the object of the
preposition "to."
I acknowledge that many knowledgeable people consider "Sarah" in "John
gave the book to Sarah" to be an indirect object. (Some of these
knowledgeable people also worship at the Church of the Dative; others
do not.) I disagree on this point, and I think my reasoning is
superior, but it's not worth fighting over, even with Eric Walker.
That's my story and I'm stuck with it.
[1] Now there's a phrase I don't get to write every day.
[2] I did not then, nor do I now, contend that analogizing indirect
objects to datives in other languages serves no purpose, but the
purpose is to help ESL students learn the grammar of English by
analogy, not to apply foreign grammatical terms to an analysis of
English.
Thanks, Bob. |
But did you learn dative, nominative, accusative in English class or in some
college class or comparative linguistics or Latin or whatever?
I think I learned "nominative" as "noun" in highschool English, or drew that
conclusion. Substantive (symbolized by "s.") was "subject" for me. And I
think I just picked that up in some Spanish class or other. I can recall a
professor trying to explain dative to us in Spanish class as a way to
differentiate between "para" and "por", though I may be mistaken. I never
had anything on which to hang the terms, thus my questioning. Glad I didn't
have to read your duet with Eric. At this st(age) I find my attention
wanders in reading the very detailed arguments and explanations. |
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Richard R. Hershberger
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:42 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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Robert Lieblich wrote:
| Quote: | Pat Durkin wrote:
"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@acme.com> wrote in message
news:1129562006.031380.56100@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Robert Lieblich wrote:
As for direct and indirect objects, brought up by another poster, some
verbs work with direct objects, others with indirect, and still others
with both. Again, you have to deal with each verb separately. There
is no rule that will tell you.
Has the terminology changed while I wasn't looking? Lots of people
have been mentioning indirect objects, but the examples I have seen
don't involve indirect objects as I understand the term. Take this
example:
We rammed the fence/We rammed into the fence.
As I understand grammatical vocabulary, both sentences have a
complement to the verb. In the first the complement is in the form of
a direct object. In the second it is in the form of a prepositional
phrase. Neither is anything at all like an indirect object, unless
they have gone and redefined the term.
Time for a lesson here, at least for me.
I find the use of "complement" very ambiguous. The expression "She read me
the book" is using indirect object before direct object, is it not?
Well I learned that "She read the book to me" expresses the indirect object
_in a prepositional phrase_. In other words. the function of "indirect
object" as part of a sentence is one thing, no matter how it is couched.
The use of "prepositional phrase" as part of sentence structure is
understood. The noun-object-of-the-preposition is still indirectly the
object of the verb.
I come from an era in which sentences (and clauses)were : Subject and
predicate. Subject: Noun or pronoun or phrase (could include another
clause, of course) which acts or is acted upon (passive voice). Predicate:
verb + anything else the pre-identified subject acts upon, or in any way or
time or place.
Am I just restating the whole thing in other terms?
Sounds as though you, Richard (and others), had a different teacher.
It's a vexing topic. Old-timers (if this NG has any) may remember
when Eric Walker and I went fifteen rounds on the subject of the
dative case in English. It's all there in Google, and you can
probably find it by searching /walker lieblich dative/. Eric was of
the view that anything that expresses an indirect object is in the
dative case, even if it is morphologically indistinguishable [1] from
the nominative or accusative. Consider these three sentences:
1. Sarah received the book from John
2. John likes Sarah
3. John gave Sarah the book
4. John gave the book to Sarah
To Eric, "Sarah" is nominative in 1, accusative in 2, and dative in
both 3 and 4. And yet the form never varies. Since even The Brothers
Fowler, as far back as *The King's English*, said that "Sarah" was in
the common case and there is no dative, etc., I thought Eric, who I
though worshipped Fowler, might agree with my argument that the label
"dative" serves no purpose in the analysis of English. No such luck.
As a sort of subplot, we also got into the issue of what an indirect
object is. Eric had little trouble with this: if it's in the dative
it's the indirect object. I pointed out that the way you know an
English word is in the dative (assuming you believe that "dative' has
any meaning in English) is that it has the function of direct object,
so saying that what's in the dative is the direct object is at best a
truism. I don't remember Eric's rejoinder, but as I recall, it made a
lot of sense until you read it closely.
After much browbeating, Eric finally, grudgingly allowed that one
could analyze sentences like the ones under discussion without ever
mentioning the dative. I took this as a validation of my argument
that "dative" was a meaningless concept in the grammar of the English
language[2]. Eric took it as a sign that the barbarians had already
destroyed the gate and were flooding into the keep.
Oh, the indirect object. AFAIAC, the term is the label for a noun or
pronoun positioned between a ditransitive verb (one that can take both
an indirect object and a direct object) and the direct object. (In
older English the order of objects could be reversed -- "Give it me"
-- but that's no longer a productive construction.) When a noun or
pronoun follows a preposition, it's the object of the preposition and
cannot be the direct object. This is a matter of syntax, not
meaning. So in "John gave Sarah the book," Sarah is the indirect
object. In "John gave the book to Sarah," Sarah is the object of the
preposition "to."
I acknowledge that many knowledgeable people consider "Sarah" in "John
gave the book to Sarah" to be an indirect object. (Some of these
knowledgeable people also worship at the Church of the Dative; others
do not.) I disagree on this point, and I think my reasoning is
superior, but it's not worth fighting over, even with Eric Walker.
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To put it another way, most modern academic grammars (certainly Quirk
et al) define "direct object" and "indirect object" as syntactic forms.
Semantic slots are plotted seperately. The semantic slot "Sarah"
fills in "John gave the book to Sarah" is the recipient (or beneficiary
or benefactive or whatever: this stuff has only been around for thirty
or forty years, and the vocabulary has not yet been standardized). In
"John gave Sarah the book", "Sarah" is once again the recipient. The
difference is that in the first sentence the recipient is expressed
through the syntactic form of a prepositional phrase, while in the
second it is expressed as an indirect object.
They could have gone the other way, and defined "indirect object" as a
semantic category and given some other name to the syntactic
categories. I really doesn't matter, and it might have been better had
linguists invented entirely new terms rather than adapting existing
terms. The important thing is that traditional English grammar
systematically conflates and confuses semantic and syntactic
categories, while modern grammars seperate them, and this is a Good
Thing.
I think that Eric never really sorted out the distinction. He always
thought that the study of grammar had peaked with Curme, and any
subsequent development could and should (indeed, must!) be dismissed
out of hand. So while he in effect argued for "indirect object" and
"dative" as semantic categories, he had to more or less consider syntax
unimportant, at least in this instance.
But in any case (as it were), this still leaves open my question. The
sentence "We rammed into the fence" does not include an indirect object
under any scheme of which I am aware. Do I need to buy a new book, or
are people misusing the term?
Richard R. Hershberger |
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Pat Durkin
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:45 pm
Post subject: Re: Usage of preposition. |
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"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@acme.com> wrote in message
news:1129642942.318645.245950@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: |
To put it another way, most modern academic grammars (certainly Quirk
et al) define "direct object" and "indirect object" as syntactic forms.
Semantic slots are plotted seperately. The semantic slot "Sarah"
fills in "John gave the book to Sarah" is the recipient (or beneficiary
or benefactive or whatever: this stuff has only been around for thirty
or forty years, and the vocabulary has not yet been standardized).
|
Ah, so that lets me off the hook. I learned my basic grammar in the
'50s--well over 40 years ago. Syntax and Semantics were not ever topics I
studied.
Snide moment at the very bottom.
| Quote: | In
"John gave Sarah the book", "Sarah" is once again the recipient. The
difference is that in the first sentence the recipient is expressed
through the syntactic form of a prepositional phrase, while in the
second it is expressed as an indirect object.
I think that Eric never really sorted out the distinction. He always
thought that the study of grammar had peaked with Curme, and any
subsequent development could and should (indeed, must!) be dismissed
out of hand. So while he in effect argued for "indirect object" and
"dative" as semantic categories, he had to more or less consider syntax
unimportant, at least in this instance.
But in any case (as it were), this still leaves open my question. The
sentence "We rammed into the fence" does not include an indirect object
under any scheme of which I am aware. Do I need to buy a new book, or
are people misusing the term?
|
We rammed the fence with the car.
We rammed the car into the fence.
Hmmm.
It raises questions or frustrations.
I don't think you need to buy a new book. I should probably just stop
asking about things that even professionals don't agree on.
.. . . And, I don't see this NG a s a good forum for clearing up basic
disagreements.
Thanks for taking the time.
Snidely Oy: I seperate usage from grammer, of course. |
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