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Re: please make line-move-visual nil
From: |
Stephen Berman |
Subject: |
Re: please make line-move-visual nil |
Date: |
Fri, 15 May 2009 16:21:14 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.93 (gnu/linux) |
On Fri, 15 May 2009 16:58:02 +0900 Miles Bader <address@hidden> wrote:
> Stephen Berman <address@hidden> writes:
>> One not too rarely encountered (and to me fairly acceptable)
>> avoid+infinitive construction is when `avoid' is passivized with an
>> expletive subject: "It should be avoided to ...". FWIW Google
>
> To my ear, "avoid to" is clearly incorrect (and I think my ear is pretty
> good).
I agree with you (I'm a native speaker of American English) about "avoid
to", i.e. in the active voice (and with an animate subject), but do you
think the construction I referred to is just as "clearly incorrect" (I
would rather say (un)acceptable)? I think there's a pretty clear
difference in acceptability. There are at least a few other verbs that
pattern with `avoid' in this respect. For example, these are all
"clearly incorrect":
(1) We avoided/recommended/suggested/discouraged to arrive early.
in contrast to these, which are "correct" English:
(2) We avoided/recommended/suggested/discouraged arriving early.
When the main verb is passivized, an expletive subject is used, and the
complements are reversed, I think there's a similar contrast. That is,
the following are completely unacceptable[1]:
(3) It should be avoided/
is highly recommended/
is strongly suggested/discouraged arriving early.
while I think these sound more or less fine (`avoided' less than the
others, but not completely bad, and clearly contrasting with (3)):
(4) It should be avoided/
is highly recommended/
is strongly suggested/discouraged to arrive early.
Do you find no acceptability contrast between (3) and (4)?
Steve Berman
Footnotes:
[1] There is a marginal reading of (3) where the subject `it' refers to
`arriving early' (it's marginal in (3) because as normally written it is
set off by a comma). But on the reading I mean `it' is an expletive,
non-referential.
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, (continued)
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Bob Nnamtrop, 2009/05/14
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Shaun Johnson, 2009/05/14
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, David Reitter, 2009/05/14
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Alan Mackenzie, 2009/05/14
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, David Reitter, 2009/05/15
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Stephen J. Turnbull, 2009/05/15
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Stephen Berman, 2009/05/15
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Miles Bader, 2009/05/15
- RE: please make line-move-visual nil, Drew Adams, 2009/05/15
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil,
Stephen Berman <=
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Miles Bader, 2009/05/15
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Stephen J. Turnbull, 2009/05/16
- Re: please make line-move-visual nil, Stefan Monnier, 2009/05/16