Timeline for "a question impossible to answer" and "a situation possible to arise" Are they grammatical?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Jun 26, 2022 at 18:59 | comment | added | Swift | @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. I was hoping that I could get a clarification of legality. Generally I think of those as "accepted norms", similar to "It's me" (grammatically incorrect, but used by everyone) instead of "It is I" (grammatically correct) | |
| Jun 26, 2022 at 16:19 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @Swift Thanks for the interesting example. I don't quite get the thrust of your point, though. | |
| Jun 26, 2022 at 15:01 | comment | added | Swift | Many times I encountered phrases like "We received results impossible to foresee." Formally it is missing "which were" after "results". Now consider a question "What did they stumble upon?" and an elliptic answer for it "Results impossible to foresee." | |
| Nov 11, 2014 at 15:11 | vote | accept | Centaurus | ||
| Oct 16, 2014 at 17:38 | comment | added | John Lawler | It was a bit confusing with the terminology used, but you're right to push infinitive as clause. Any verb used as a verb will have a subject, but it may well be understood, like Imperative or Equi. If people can get to observe the clauses involved, a whole lot of grammar confusion goes away. The choice of which rule to apply (and therefore what happens) to an infinitive is generally controlled by the clause the infinitive modifies, and especially by the matrix verb if it's a complement infinitive. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 17:28 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler Thanks for that! Was there anything substantially misleading in my post? | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 17:19 | comment | added | John Lawler | TM and Raising do only happen with infinitives. Equi can apply with infinitives or gerunds. But none of them work with tensed complements. Pretty much every infinitive is the remains of a deceased clause, and they certainly hafta have subjects (often enough in a for-clause: They said for him to leave now), if they're expressed. But often they're deleted, either as indefinites (easy [for anybody] to do it) or by Equi from an NP in the matrix clause (He wants [] to leave now). One of the purposes of untensed constructions is to allow parts to be merged with the rest of the sentence. | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 16:54 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler or do you think my post makes it sound like t-m and equi only happen with infinitives? | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 16:49 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler Isn't the "rule"as given to OP just saying don't use "possible" + infinitival clause as a PC of BE, unless it's in an extraposition. It doesn't directly equate equi or tough movement with extraposition - does it? It seems to be a usage rule, not a transformational one! Or do you feel my post is equating them somehow? I freely admit to being on the bounds of my comfort zone here ... | |
| Oct 16, 2014 at 16:30 | comment | added | John Lawler |
The "rule" that was "given" applies to Extraposition, which inserts a dummy it and moves a heavy subject phrase to the end of the clause. The extraposed subject is often an infinitive, but it can be just about any kind of phrase or clause that can appear as a noun phrase subject. So the rule is doubly wrong in equating Tough-Movement and Equi with Extraposition, and with attributing this to the infinitive. Whoever formulated this rule was definitely Unclear On The Concept of infinitives.
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| Oct 16, 2014 at 14:03 | history | answered | Araucaria - Him | CC BY-SA 3.0 |