Timeline for Why is "look" transitive in "look you in the eye"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 9, 2019 at 13:55 | vote | accept | Louis Liu | ||
| Jun 18, 2018 at 20:13 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/1008804854117093378 | ||
| May 24, 2018 at 20:29 | answer | added | GKK | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 26, 2014 at 5:56 | vote | accept | Louis Liu | ||
| Aug 9, 2019 at 13:55 | |||||
| May 23, 2014 at 23:18 | comment | added | Neil W | Other examples are "He looked me up and down", "He looked her over", "He looked him in the face". | |
| May 23, 2014 at 17:53 | answer | added | Anonym | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 23, 2014 at 16:50 | answer | added | McGurk | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 18, 2014 at 4:44 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @Anonym The OED agrees with you, calling this a quasi-transitive use that probably put the object in the dative as with German einem ins gesicht sehen. On the other hand, it calls look daggers at someone fully transitive. | |
| May 18, 2014 at 4:08 | comment | added | Anonym | @WS2 Whoops. That was a typo. They were both supposed to be in the present tense. | |
| May 18, 2014 at 1:21 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 66 characters in body; edited tags; edited title
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| May 17, 2014 at 21:13 | answer | added | Fraser Orr | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 17, 2014 at 19:47 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | If you don't like 'He looked her in the eye', I wouldn't like to imagine what you think of 'He looked daggers at her'. Unless you want to take these constructions right outside the scope of normal analysis (just slapping the label 'idiom' on them, which means abnormal grammar is almost to be expected), you have to accept that your dictionary doesn't cover all bases. AHD, Collins, and especially RHK Webster's are better here. | |
| May 17, 2014 at 16:54 | comment | added | WS2 | @Anonym I'm afraid I do not follow I gave him it versus I give it to him.One is past tense, the other present. You could equally have said I give him it, and I gave it to him. In any event, isn't 'case' all about nouns, not verbs. | |
| May 17, 2014 at 16:18 | answer | added | Jonathan Spirit | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 17, 2014 at 16:13 | comment | added | Anonym | @WS2 In OE, the accusative and dative cases were fully separate; come ME, they had merged into a single oblique case, which was used for both purposes. We still have this 'dual case', so to speak, with ditransitive verbs: i.e. I gave him it and I give it to him are equivalent--but otherwise the dative application of the oblique case has fallen out of use. It otherwise remains only in a few set phrases, such as woe is me (i.e. woe is to me, I am the recipient of woe), methinks (i.e. it seems to me), and, probably, the one that the asker has asked about. | |
| May 17, 2014 at 15:26 | comment | added | WS2 | @Anonym I don't know much about 'the old dative case' - please can you tell me more? I would simply have said the expression was an idiom which did not follow a regular form of the verb. | |
| May 17, 2014 at 14:14 | comment | added | Anonym | I think that this is a remnant of the old dative case, specifically dative of possession: i.e. look you in the eye is a different way to say look in your eye. | |
| May 17, 2014 at 13:45 | comment | added | Louis Liu | You is used after look. Is it obvious? | |
| May 17, 2014 at 13:34 | comment | added | Kris | Is it transitive here? What makes you think so? :) | |
| May 17, 2014 at 13:31 | history | asked | Louis Liu | CC BY-SA 3.0 |