“Iambics march from short to long; / With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng”

[larryhammer]

(Tangentially sparked by the previous post.) As a professional copy editor, I have a decent grasp of English grammar and syntax, but this one has me stumped.

Why is it that, for phrases in the form “{causative} {object} {verb},” when {causative} is “make” or “have” the verb is in stem form (“make him stop”) but when it’s “require” or “cause” it’s in infinitive form (“require him to stop”)? You can categorize most* other verbs of causation into these two bins.

Why these two separate syntaxes for what’s apparently the same structure?


* A sneaky one is “tell,” which takes an infinitive—except when it takes what looks like a stem but actually is an imperative in an unmarked direct quotation, “tell him stop.”

---L.

Subject quote from Metrical Feet: A Lesson for a Boy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Comments

[mme_n_b]

Is it because for "make" and "have" you are doing something to him, but for "require" and "tell" you are having him do something and there's even a possibility that he won't?

[cmcmck]

In older English forms the equivalent would have been 'make him to stop'.

And in English english even now it's 'tell him to stop'.

[larryhammer]

Ah, so it was infinitive in Middle-English-or-so, and in some cases but not others a colloquial form has supplanted the older one? Interesting.

[thistleingrey]

Try your favorite internet resource for inflected infinitive in Old English (e.g. to habbanne for standard inf. habban, to have), used basically as an object. The complicating factor, as usual, was the admixture of Latin/French syntax and how people tried standardizing clarity during C18 prescriptivism, especially. To borrow your example a bit, it's I require that he stop (Latinate subjunctive taking over older English subjunctive) versus I require him to stop (inherited English inflected-infinitive version), which French would prefer as I require his stopping (gerundive for infl-inf--note the genitive, also). Not sure whether it helps to know that it's kind of a soup.

[larryhammer]

Ah -- that does help explicate things a little. Thanks!