Larry Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer) wrote2025-02-14 10:54 am
larryhammer) wrote2025-02-14 10:54 am
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“Iambics march from short to long; / With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng”
(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.
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.
no subject