Timeline for Is "decide to give" a compound verb?
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17 events
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| May 7, 2015 at 0:05 | comment | added | Dan Bron | @Kathy You probably don't know this, but John Lawler was professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan for a few decades. He's the only user on this site who can quite literally cite himself. In other words, John's opinion qualifies as research. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 19:13 | comment | added | Ireth Tasartir | "A copular (or linking) verb is complemented by a subject predicative in sentence or clause structure. The most common copular verb is be; others include become (my friend), feel (tired), get (ready), seem (happy). A copular prepositional verb is a prepositional verb (combination of verb plus preposition) that is complemented by a subject predicative: sound like (you), turn into (a monster), serve as (mitigating circumstances)." (Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 1996). Copular verbs do exist. Do some research before giving your opinion. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 16:54 | comment | added | John Lawler | Oh, and I wouldn't "classify all verbs in English as lexical, copulative, auxiliary or modal". Modals are auxiliaries, for starts, and there are no "copulative" verbs; they're an invention of puzzled teachers who want to label everything they don't understand. Predicates in English can be classified into verbs, predicate nouns, and predicate adjectives; verbs can further be classified many ways, but the way you mentioned is not one of them. So you shouldn't worry about where the verbs fit -- the answer is they don't fit. The truth about English grammar often comes as a shock. Sorry. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 16:50 | comment | added | John Lawler | I'd call seem and appear intransitive predicates with subject complements. They're unusual in that most such predicates are predicate adjectives or nouns like possible, likely, unnecessary, sad, difficult, a shame, disgusting, etc. Extraposition or Raising or Tough-Movement generally will move the subject complement (or at least most of it) to the end of the sentence, leaving a dummy subject of some sort, like it. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 15:55 | comment | added | Ireth Tasartir | @JohnLawler, how would you then call this type of verbs which are lexical, but require some sort of complement in order the sentence to have a meaning? If we can classify all verbs in English as lexical, copulative, auxiliary or modal, into which category would decide, seem, feel belong? For example The velvet felt soft against my skin or I wanted to taste the pie. I'm just writing what they taught us. Whether this should or should not be taught, it is not the matter of my opinion. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 14:05 | comment | added | John Lawler | @Kathy: The problem with that kind of analysis is that it doesn't make the distinctions needed because it can't go into detail -- it's defined in a vague and impressionistic way so that nobody can tell what verbs belong to the class. Grammatical terms need to be defined in grammatical terms, not in terms like "a complete thought", which is utterly meaningless -- thoughts are unobservable and their completeness is a matter of personal opinion, not fact. So I'm afraid it shouldn't be used at all; certainly not in college. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 14:01 | comment | added | John Lawler | @Kathy: Thank you for the pointer. It's traditionalist nonsense, I'm afraid. Seem is an intransitive verb with a clause for its subject (*That he is here seems), but the clause must be moved, either by Extraposition (It seems that he is here) or by A-Raising (He seems to be here). Very like appear. It doesn't belong in the same class with decide, which is A-Equi. Details on Equi and Raising, with solved exercises, here. | |
| May 5, 2015 at 8:37 | comment | added | Ireth Tasartir | @JohnLawler, we use this term at University and I've found the term now on the internet where you can see some more examples such as seem and appear - verbs of incomplete predication. Although decide and prefer are not on the list, they cannot stand on its own because you cannot just say I decide or I prefer, they require a complement which is, in this case, a lexical verb in its full infinitive form. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 23:13 | comment | added | John Lawler | @Kathy: "copulative verbs of incomplete predication"? That sounds like a name from an official verb list. Where does it come from and how many other kinds of verbs are there on that list? I would say that decide is an active mental verb that takes either a tensed complement or an infinitive complement with A-Equi, while prefer is a stative mental verb with two potential complements, since it's an implied comparison. Prefer can take an infinitive or gerund complement with A-Equi; or it can take a that-complement, with either a tensed verb or an infinitive. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 21:12 | comment | added | Nicole | @JohnLawler That seems exactly right! If you make that an answer, I'll accept it. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 21:01 | comment | added | Ireth Tasartir | In this case need is lexical verb (when followed by to-infinitive), although it can be semi-modal. Decide and prefer are copulative verbs of incomplete predication that require lexical verb. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 21:00 | answer | added | Greg Lee | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 4, 2015 at 20:58 | comment | added | John Lawler |
Well, "compound verb" isn't a very helpful term; it just means Verb and/or Verb. What you're describing is what's called a complement clause governed by a main verb. Complements are much more important than compounds. We say that decide has an infinitive complement clause (for him) to give them a tour and need has an infinitive complement clause (for me) to go to the store, for instance. There are four kinds of complement clause, and infinitive clause is one of them. Which one gets used depends on what the main verb is.
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| May 4, 2015 at 20:38 | comment | added | Dan Bron | Oh, whoops! Yes. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 20:38 | comment | added | Nicole | Wouldn't "tour" be the object, not the subject, of "give"? | |
| May 4, 2015 at 20:35 | comment | added | Dan Bron | Well, if the two verbs in a compound verb must share the same subject, then "decided to give" can't be compound, because the subject of "give" is "tour" and the subject of "decided" is "give". Unfortunately, I don't know what these constructions are actually called. | |
| May 4, 2015 at 20:20 | history | asked | Nicole | CC BY-SA 3.0 |