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Malcolm101 Posted 13 years ago
Grammar
Make it Happen Vs Make it Happens/Happened
My friends and I were discussing the following sentence:
1. He can't wait to make it happen.
We all agreed that the verb "happen" cannot be "happened" or "happens" here. We tried to give our answers grammatical reasons. Please let me know whether I have analysed the sentence correctly to support the view that it should be "happen".
"He" is the subject of the sentence. While "wait" is the simple predicate, "can't wait to make it happen" is the complete predicate. The prepositional phrase is "to make it happen": it modifies "wait". "Make" here is a linking verb that should be followed by a noun complement, "it happen". Therefore, it should be "happen" and not "happens" or "happened".
Am I right? (I am sorry if I have got the whole thing terribly wrong.)
1. He can't wait to make it happen.
We all agreed that the verb "happen" cannot be "happened" or "happens" here. We tried to give our answers grammatical reasons. Please let me know whether I have analysed the sentence correctly to support the view that it should be "happen".
"He" is the subject of the sentence. While "wait" is the simple predicate, "can't wait to make it happen" is the complete predicate. The prepositional phrase is "to make it happen": it modifies "wait". "Make" here is a linking verb that should be followed by a noun complement, "it happen". Therefore, it should be "happen" and not "happens" or "happened".
Am I right? (I am sorry if I have got the whole thing terribly wrong.)
Top answer
Yes. 'Happen' here is the base/infinitive form of the verb.
- Yes.
- 'Happen' here is the base/infinitive form of the verb.
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6 Answers
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Malcolm101The prepositional phrase is "to make it happen" ...a noun complement, "it happen"The "to" of the infinitive is not a preposition, so this is not a prepositional phrase. 'make' is not a linking verb. Further, "it happen" is not a noun complement.
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let, make, have, help, see, and h
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Thank you, CalifJim, Clive and Aspara Gus. All of you are simply wonderful! (Even the grammars could not make things so clear to us.) There are a number of new things that I have learnt---until I read all your explanations, I did not realise how involved the sentence was. I am now looking at Cambridge Grammar of English to understand certain terms that you'll have used. If I am not sure, I shall a
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