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Re: Evolution of Applicatives

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Monday, November 15, 2004, 18:46
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 =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com =============================================== Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]