English Grammar Questions
Q16: Short vs. Long Infinitive
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| From FG
- USA " Dear Corollary Theorems, (...) I teach English, though I am one of the confused teachers who has fallen victim to grammar and language teaching simplifications. I live and teach English in USA--the country with non-existent English grammar teaching and learning habits. It is assumed here that grammar should not be taught to American kids because they are born into English-speaking families, therefore they acquire the language gradually through their parents! There are different American families, of course: educated, semi-educated and uneducated. How could that assumption be true if kids, before entering school, are at different levels of language knowledge? I view this approach as extremely reactionary--it plays into the hands of the rulers of our country. They don't need fully-educated masses of Americans; half-educated or totally uneducated Americans are a good source of workhorses who have no time to stop, think, and read a book. (...) In general my opinion about your approach to grammar is not devious [just a joke of ours] at all; I know what I want to say. On the contrary, I can see things (long-forgotten) in your book that I learned in University. Your treatment of conditionals, for example, or the number of pages you have dedicated to the verb. I don't own the book, but I'm planning to buy one. (...) I need to know what is happening with the verb "to help". Has it become another modal verb? No grammar book references this phenomenon. (...) You use 'helps understanding and extending the range of conditional complex sentence'--I noticed two instances. Do you intentionally avoid using 'help' with the following infinitive: 'helps to understand and extend the range'? What is wrong with this verb? Most people use it with NO "to" particle. What is your explanation? (...) I like the way you pounce upon all sorts of language simplification. That is a stupid trend together with the "holistic" approach to language teaching and learning. (...)" We took the liberty of inserting more than the minimum necessary paragraphs from FG email to us, because his opinions are particularly interesting. Thank you very much FG for your appreciations. Unfortunately, we are certain that our "short-answer" to FG has saddened him, a little bit. The long and complete answer, however, should bring more light on this topic. Our "short-answer" to FG was similar to the following. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| The
problem is, there is a longer answer to this particular topic. Note the introductory adverb "Generally"
marked in red above: that is a personal addition of the author, Mr. O G POPA. The meaning of the adverb
"generally" qualifying all paragraphs following is, there are exceptions! Consider the following examples. 1. This book helps you understand English grammar. (grammatical form) 2. This book helps you to understand English grammar. (the accentuated form) Both versions above are correct grammatically, providing they are used/interpreted correctly. The first form is based on grammatical rules. The second form is an emphatic accentuation, and long infinitive helps stressing the needed/wanted accent. The great confusion is generated by the fact that, in real life, people use both forms above. Few people do that knowing perfectly well what they do; some use one form or the other because each sounds better in particular contexts; most people, however, are terribly confused about using either form since no grammar book troubles to explain them appropriately. FG has signaled "the trend" correctly, though he took it in reverse. The correct grammatical form is #1 above, and the "trend" is #2. Note that "the trend" is a grammatical mistake, unless it is used specifically to create (strong) accentuations: this is the reason behind the adverb "generally" added to the rule by Mr. O G POPA. Now, grammatical rules are important to help us express correct meanings. However, there are instances when grammatical rules (and implicitly correct forms of expressions) do not work. Note the following: A. This book helps to express the meaning. Since there is no accentuation, the form above is incorrect grammatically. B. This book helps express the meaning. The sentence in form B above is correct grammatically, though it doesn't sound right. Therefore, in order to make it sound "English", people perform a little morphologic transformation. C. This book helps expressing the meaning. Syntactically, the direct object expression in blue, in all examples above, remains unchanged; morphologically, we use a gerund verb in example C to replace the short infinitive in form B. The meaning of the sentence C is complete, and it does sound very good English. Type C sentences are the recommended form whenever short infinitives do not sound right, or if you are in doubt about using short or long infinitives. In LSEG, Table M6.4.6.1, section D, you could discover a brief list of verbs (about 30) which require they are followed by present gerund verbs. However, since present gerund is a very good form of English expression, the mentioned list may be easily extended to many other verbs. We keep on stressing that LSEG is a complete English grammar reference: the answers to your questions help us prove that important aspect based on real life examples. Up to now, it happened only once that we couldn't find the answer in our book, and that was only due to the fact the question submitted to us was (almost) perpendicular to grammar. |
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