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Vestigium Posted 19 years ago
Linguistics Studies
on Extraposition of a clausal object
Hi,
The question is from the book "A student's grammar of the English language"(by Sidney Greenbaum / Randolph Quirk/1990/11th printing) p.418 .
When the object is an -ing clause in SVOC and SVOA clause types, it can undergo extraposition; when it is a to-infinitive or a that-clause, it must do so.
1) You must find working here exciting.
2) You must find it exciting working here.
But:
3) I made settling the matter my prime objective.
4) *I made it my prime objective settling the matter. (an asterick mark indicates unacceptable.)
According to the rule above, 4) should be also correct or acceptable, but the author said it is incorrect without any explanation.
Could you explain why 4) is unacceptable?
Is there another rule for the extraposition of an -ing object?
The question is from the book "A student's grammar of the English language"(by Sidney Greenbaum / Randolph Quirk/1990/11th printing) p.418 .
When the object is an -ing clause in SVOC and SVOA clause types, it can undergo extraposition; when it is a to-infinitive or a that-clause, it must do so.
1) You must find working here exciting.
2) You must find it exciting working here.
But:
3) I made settling the matter my prime objective.
4) *I made it my prime objective settling the matter. (an asterick mark indicates unacceptable.)
According to the rule above, 4) should be also correct or acceptable, but the author said it is incorrect without any explanation.
Could you explain why 4) is unacceptable?
Is there another rule for the extraposition of an -ing object?
Top answer
In " I made settling the matter my prime objective," ‘settling the matter’ is the IO while ‘my prime objective’ the DO. This is the SVIO/DO pattern and not the SVOC or SVOA. You may interchange the order of the IO & DO in the sentence but you can’t add an ‘it’ after the verb as in (2).
- In " I made settling the matter my prime objective," ‘settling the matter’ is the IO while ‘my prime objective’ the DO.
- This is the SVIO/DO pattern and not the SVOC or SVOA.
- You may interchange the order of the IO & DO in the sentence but you can’t add an ‘it’ after the verb as in (2).
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7 Answers
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In " I made settling the matter my prime objective," ‘settling the matter’ is the IO while ‘my prime objective’ the DO. This is the SVIO/DO pattern and not the SVOC or SVOA. You may interchange the order of the IO & DO in the sentence but you can’t add an ‘it’ after the verb as in (2).
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To Buddhaheart,
Thank you for your concern,
but, I don't think you got the point.
"settling the matter" cannot be IO in the given sentence.
and this question is about extraposition of clausal O in SVOC/SVOA .
Thank you for your concern,
but, I don't think you got the point.
"settling the matter" cannot be IO in the given sentence.
and this question is about extraposition of clausal O in SVOC/SVOA .
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In "That you like it I find difficult to believe" in which the that clause extraposed, what is the function of the clause?
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AnonymousIn "That you like it I find difficult to believe" in which the that clause extraposed, what is the function of the clause?The position occupied by 'That you like it' in your example does not correspond to the notion of extraposition as used by Quirk and Greenbaum 1990 (for example). What you have here is a that-clause which is preposed fro
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Hello,
coming back to the question of the ungrammaticality of '*I made it my prime objective settling the matter', I wonder if the distinction between current and resulting attribute has anything to do with it.
In 'I made .... my prime objective' the object complement is semantically a resulting attribute, while in 'You must find ....
coming back to the question of the ungrammaticality of '*I made it my prime objective settling the matter', I wonder if the distinction between current and resulting attribute has anything to do with it.
In 'I made .... my prime objective' the object complement is semantically a resulting attribute, while in 'You must find ....
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I really don't think that "I made settling the matter my prime objective" be a SVOO type of structure. Since in this case "made" is not a di-transitive verb, but a complex-transitive verb. It is not that you make something for someone, on the contrary, "my prime concern" is a description of "settling the matter".
At least that is what I think
Flor
At least that is what I think
Flor
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