Directly Indirect

I cancelled my ESOL class for last night because I had to wait for a plumber to come to my house and connect my new kitchen sink. I felt kind of bad about it for a minute, until I remembered that this is a volunteer endeavor. And my students are not refugees who need basic language skills for survival.

Still, I enjoy the interesting turns the class takes, and I felt the slight sting of disappointing someone. This feeling abated when, at 6:30, I experienced the unrivaled joy of water-on-demand in my kitchen sink for the first time in three weeks.

My guilt was also assuaged by the email I received Wednesday from my newest student, Regina. In connection with the presentation Regina gave us last week about an American folk story, she had written a short essay about the story and her analysis of it. She emailed the essay to me, asking me to correct any grammatical mistakes she had made.

I was only too happy to oblige. For one thing, I was delighted that one of my students had reached a little beyond the bare minimum requirements; for another, I absolutely love editing for grammar. There is something infinitely satisfying about grammar: clear rules that are flexible enough for dynamic expression. It is the very definition of making order from chaos. Besides, the challenge of explaining a particularly tricky syntactical error--why it’s wrong and how to fix it--via email is exhilarating for me. 

I know, I know: I am a total grammar geek. And I wear the title proudly.

Regina’s writing was very good. She had a little difficulty with when to use a definite or indefinite article (the vs. a/an), and her verb tense shifted a little, but mostly she expressed herself well. The most difficult error to explain was a syntactical one. In her final paragraph, Regina stated how much she enjoyed reading the story, and that it “gave me to think about a lot.” Now, many of us would correct this by simply saying that Americans wouldn’t say it like that. But that response does nothing to help the student avoid such problems in the future. Whenever possible, I prefer to give my ESOL students a rule they can apply to future writing, rather than the non-answer of “that’s just not how we say it here.” 

I was only able to explain this error because of a grammar book I am reading right now, Doing Grammar, by Max Morenberg. It is the textbook for a linguistics course I had planned to take this semester but dropped because of time constraints. I borrowed the text from a friend and decided to read through it on my own. I’ve only made it through one and a half chapters so far, but they were amazingly edifying.

Because of this slight exposure to Morenberg’s linguistic classifications of verbs, I was able to explain to Regina the difference between her phrasing and the use of other verb+infinitive constructions.

The basic rule--the one most ESOL students cling to--is that when two verbs follow each other in a sentence, the first is conjugated to match the subject, and the other is left in its infinitive “to” state. Some modal verbs, like help or make, allow the “to” to be dropped from the infinitive, especially when they include an indirect object. ( e.g., This book helped me learn grammar. Or: The new law made him drive slower.)

The Morenberg text starts out by categorizing verb types by what kinds of grammatical elements may follow them, elements like direct and indirect objects. As most writers and grammar geeks know, verbs in English are transitive or intransitive, meaning they can or cannot have direct objects. The verb “to talk,” for example, can have an indirect object but not a direct object: you can talk to someone (indirect object), but you cannot talk something (direct object). “To speak,” on the other hand, can have both: you can speak French (d.o.) to your teacher (i.o.). Morenberg calls these elements that can follow verbs “slots” and defines his categories of verbs by what types of slots can follow them. The concept of transitive vs. intransitive verbs is not new to me, obviously. But the idea of defining verbs by not only whether they can take a direct object, but by what kinds of direct and indirect objects can follow them, why they are ordered a certain way, and how to identify the functions of those slots: that is a revelation.

In Regina’s sentence, she used the verb “to give” which can always take both an indirect object (the person or thing receiving what is given) and a direct object (the thing being given). I believe Regina fully understands this. However, the indirect object in Regina’s sentence was not a simple, concrete one-word noun, like paper or the flu. Her indirect object was a noun phrase that contained a verb functioning as an adjective.

So Regina was grappling with several grammar rules at once, all of which seemed conflicting. Following a conjugated verb with an infinitive, ordering the indirect and direct objects, placing an adjective as close as possible to the noun it is describing; all of these rules apply to Regina’s sentence, but they don’t cover everything. 

I can fully understand why she chose the order she did. I wanted my explanation of how to fix the error to help her make a better choice in the future.

Regina’s sentence was: “It gave me to think about a lot.” The correct sentence is, of course: “It gave me a lot to think about.”

I explained it as: the order goes verb-indirect object-direct object, and the indirect object is the noun phrase “a lot to think about.” What did the story give her? A lot. A lot of what? A lot to think about. In this instance, “to think about” describes and amplifies “a lot.”

Whew. That was a lot to think about. Those linguistic gymnastics helped me feel justified in canceling class this week. Did this post give you a lot to think about?