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Taka Posted 18 years ago
Grammar

cannot help

Does this sentence (the part in bold in particular) sound natural?
When I hear a siren, I always become so curious that I cannot help running to see what is going on there.
  

Top answer

Natural, yes. Delete " there " from the end of it though. It seems redundant to me.

— Huevos

  • Natural, yes.
  • Delete " there " from the end of it though.
  • It seems redundant to me.
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7 Answers
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Natural, yes. Delete "there" from the end of it though. It seems redundant to me.
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It sounds natural enough to me.
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If I said it, it would be can't help, but other than that, it sounds fine to me.
CJ
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OK, thanks everyone.
Now, would you come up with any verbs which you think would sound strange if used with 'can't help'? If it sounded strange, then why?
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I don't think there are any restrictions regarding the verb, but the subject should probably be animate. For example, the following, though grammatical, is very strange:
The concert can't help lasting two hours.
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CalifJimI
Do you have any potential candidates for the class of verbs you're looking for?
CJ 

No. And that 'cannot help running' wasn't a candidate until I found a book (written by a Japanese) which said it didn't sound OK; it said it had to be 'cannot resist running' instead, but I thought it was almost the same.
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resist is a higher register word than help in that context, but other than that, I see no difference.
CJ
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