Re: If you were inventing CoBOL...
From: Michael Wojcik (mwojcik_at_newsguy.com)
Date: 09/16/04
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Date: 15 Sep 2004 22:07:34 GMT
In article <ci9sbs$2das$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com>, "Chuck Stevens" <charles.stevens@unisys.com> writes:
> "Robert Wagner" <robert@wagner.net.yourmammaharvests> wrote in message
> news:joegk05mipj3jee12evgs016daukv6u7hm@4ax.com...
>
> > Consider: He came by airplane, He did right by his children.
>
> In these cases I strongly believe that "to come by" and "to do right by"
> function grammatically as *verbs* in English. That "by" is a separate --
> and even separable -- word is simply another reflection of the rules of
> English.
While it's certainly true that English has verb forms that consist of
multiple words, and while English grammar is not a science, and there
are many cases where the grammatical function of a word or other unit
is ambiguous, I think in this case the better analysis is simply to
recognize "by airplane" and "by his children" as adjectival
prepositional phrases.
Consider that "to do right by" is not generally used in isolation ("He
did right by."), and while "to come by" is ("He came by."), it's
plausibly just an elision of "to come by here".
Already, we're treating "to do right" as a verb, while some would
have it verb ("to do") and direct object ("right"). What does he do?
Right. In what manner? By his children, ie the rightness he does is
in relation to them. That is the more precise analysis; but since "to
do right" is an idiom, we can grant that it functions in the whole as
a verb.
If we allow the compound verb "to do right" to swallow up the "by" as
well, then it's not clear what the grammatical function of "his
children" can be. By the conventions of English syntax, it appears
that it must be a direct object. But "to do right [by]" is
intransitive, so it can't take a direct object.
The situation is equally bad with "to come by", in the sense that
Robert used it. Of course "to come by" is also an idiom for "to
receive" - "he came by money" - but this is obviously not the same
usage as in "he came by airplane". ("He came by an airplane" is
nicely ambiguous.) Again, "to come [by]" is intransitive, and
moreover "airplane", all by itself there at the end of the sentence,
is not a well-formed direct object in standard English, which wants
an article or other indexical part of speech to introduce a discrete
noun used as a direct object (eg "he flew airplane" should instead be
"he flew the airplane" or similar).
-- Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@microfocus.com Even 300 years later, you should plan it in detail, when it comes to your summer vacation. -- Pizzicato Five
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