Re: Evolution of Applicatives

On Monday, November 15, 2004, at 08:09 , Chris Bates wrote:

>>> Again, this isn't relevant. *"The NEA was given money to by
>>> liberal activists" is grossly ungrammatical, and that's the analogous
>>> structure you're invoking.
>>>
>>>
> I wouldn't say this as it strikes me as a little inelegant, but I
> wouldn't say its ungrammatical. I often hear sentences like this,
So do I. I don't find it particularly unusual. Certainly I would not say
it is ungrammatical.

> and I
> thought the new trend in linguistics was to describe actual usage rather
> than prescribe what is grammatical?
Quite so - and I did not think it was very new either. I thought this was
the norm of much of 20th century linguistics.

> I suspect it's one of those borderline things...
Yes, but borderline only for some prescriptivists - obviously there are
some prescriptivists that have no doubt it is ungrammatical.

> And I definately find "Money was given to the NEA
> (by....)" acceptable, "Money was given the NEA" sounding american to me.
The same here - I definitely find the former preferable. But both occur -
tho as far as I am aware they occur on opposite sides of the Atlantic   :)

> *shrugs* They often seem to skip "to"... like "I'm going to write him",
> which is almost painful for me to hear lol.
Precisely.

Ray
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