Timeline for Sentence analysis for "Who would it benefit you to know, or what type of person would it benefit you to know to grow your business"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Jan 7, 2014 at 22:42 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Emanuel: ...which is the same as in English: it "fills up the position" of subject, i.e. it is a dummy subject. A very common phenomenon in the Indo-European languages. | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 17:33 | comment | added | Emanuel | @Cerberus.. it's only there to fill the position though... "Mir gefällt nicht, dass er sich auszieht"... now it's gone. | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 16:56 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Emanuel: Well, it's not that different in English! It's ugly and hard to parse at a glance. As to es, how about something like Es gefällt mir nicht, sie zu nehmen? And Es gefällt mir nicht, dass er auszieht. All dummy subjects. | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 11:26 | comment | added | Emanuel | @JanusBahsJacquet... I forgot to mention... the second version (with the ihn) is definitely wrong | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 11:25 | comment | added | Emanuel | @Cerberus... I am a native speaker and I would consider it impossible. Technically it works but I think 80 % of the population cannot comprehend this at the first read through and editors and teachers would mark it and have it rephrased. | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 11:19 | comment | added | Emanuel | @JanusBahsJacquet I am a German native speaker and both suggestions you made are hard to comprehend for me. They might be correct (I doubt it) but they are bad bad bad style. German does not really allow for wrapping the top-level stuff into lower level brackets ... the only feasible way to ask this would be "Wen zu kennen, würde dir helfen" so you have the full subordinate infinitive at the start as a subject. Also, German does not need a dummy "es" here because it only uses it to fill position 1, if that should be empty. Here, it's not empty | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 0:27 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @JanusBahsJacquet: Yes, it is possible as well in Dutch and German (I'm not 100 % sure about the exact order in German, but no ihn; in Dutch it is much as in English). Latin can do this too (and even more, as with the relative pronoun on Raphael's tombstone: Ille hic est Raphael: timuit quo sospite vinci rerum magna parens et moriente mori.). Greek can do it too. But it is less surprising in languages with a more flexible word order. Relative and interrogative pronouns just really love to be in first position. | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 23:58 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | This is not really a ‘truly crazy English’ thing as such: an exact parallel can be constructed (and would be far less clumsy to boot) in all the Scandinavian languages, too. I presume German and Dutch would both do it just fine as well, but I’m far too shaky in both to say that with any kind of certainty. Would something along the lines of „Wen würde es mir nutzen zu kennen?“ not be grammatical in German? Or would you need an extra pronoun, „Wen würde es mir nutzen ihn zu kennen“? | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:27 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Emanuel: You could say that. You can start the sentence with him if you want to add focus to/on it. But it is obviously uncommon. It is just like him I saw in the supermarket. | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:25 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Emanuel: Yes, more or less. The reason is that interrogative pronouns normally have to be the first word of the sentence: she likes me => whom does she like? This phenomenon is so strong that it even applies to very complex sentences, so that who(m) is moved to the front no matter what. | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:24 | comment | added | Emanuel | Could I also say "Him it would benefit me to know."? | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:23 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 15 characters in body
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| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:23 | comment | added | Emanuel | So what happens is that we are asking for the direct object of a subordinate infinite clause that in itself is (part of) the subject of the whole sentence and we do that by wrapping the main clause into the subordinate infinitive phrase? This must be one of the weirdest grammatical things I have ever seen. A sublevel element enclosing its own container... English, you are truely crazy | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:18 | history | answered | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |