And here’s a cite that illustrates my point:
http://www.sta.cathedral.org/lowerschool/form1/Eng1JAVwww/Grammar/Diagramming/DiagE/diagSolE11.html
Well, to replow this ground, I already wrote that
Yes, enable is transitive, and its direct object is her. My citation was illustrating the point that an infinitive phrase can serve as an adverb, which is true for both transitive and intransitive verbs. This particular infinitive phrase is an adverbial phrase modifying the transitive verb enable.
The infinitive phrase is “to create . . . ,” not “her to create . . . .” The pronoun her serves as the infinitive’s subject, but is not itself within the infinitive phrase:
Then either you didn’t see or understand the example I cited. Won’t argue with you anymore. . .
But I’m right.
I saw the example, understood it, and disagree with it for the reasons that I have already explained. The authority that you are citing is the website of a seventh-grade English class. I’m sure that the teacher couldn’t have possibly made a mistake. :rolleyes: I mean, that would be as unlikely as a mistake on the PSAT, right? Or even worse, a correctly worded sentence on the PSAT getting graded as if it were mistaken because some teachers were teaching what DanielWithrow called (in this thread) “an old and frowned-upon construction” . . .
I’m with Earl here. Sorry, Brian.
Here’s why.
“Enables” is a transitive verb, requiring a direct object. It doesn’t require an indirect object; otherwise, the sentence, “The SDMB enables a lot of pointless grammar-debating” would be incorrect. Nor, for the same reason, does it require an adverb or adverbial phrase (actually, no verb requires an adverb).
If “her” is the direct object of “enables,” then the sentence, “Toni Morrison’s genius enables her,” would make some kind of sense.
Clearly, it doesn’t.
The direct object of “enables” is whatever is enabled. And clearly, what is enabled is “her to create…”
The entire infinitive phrase acts as the direct object of “enables” in this sentence.
Daniel
DanielWithrow, thanks for the response. I am willing to be persuaded, but I’m not there yet, so let me push back a little on the issue that I am (correctly or incorrectly) getting stuck on.
I agree that enable is transitive and needs neither an indirect object nor an adverb. But it can be modified by an adverb (or, in this example, an adverbial phrase): <Toni Morrison’s genius enables her in ways that you and I cannot imitate.> The direct object in this example is the pronoun her. The phrase in ways that you and I cannot imitate is an adverbial phrase modifying the verb. I have been viewing the infinitive phrase in the OP’s example (the one from the test) as equivalent to that adverbial phrase.
One issue that I have with recognizing the whole infinitive phrase as the direct object is that I don’t view the pronoun her as part of the infinitive phrase. If it were, then I could concede your and Earl Snake-Hips Tucker’s point. (Unfortunately, I’m sitting in my hotel room at a business conference, without access to the references that would help me agree or disagree more effectively with that point!)
Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out where “her” figures into things, too. Here’s the best I’ve been able to come up with: it’s a required agent?
Huh?
(Sorry about the formatting; I added some in to make it a little clearer).
Looking at this, it seems that the infinitive phrase must be a direct object. In comparable sentences that don’t require an agent, e.g., “Toni Morrison can afford to have me killed,” it’s clear that “to have me killed” is the object of “afford,” yes? The only relevant difference between “afford” and “enable” is that the latter takes an agent.
So what’s an agent?
From another page in the same site, we get:
Hmm. Not much help.
Anyone have any ideas on this? I’ll keep looking, meanwhile.
Daniel
The analysis would be much simpler for an equivalent indirect construction: <I prefer that you do it>, as opposed to <I prefer you to do it> or <I prefer you doing it>. For the first example, <I prefer that you do it>, it is clear that the direct object is the noun clause that you do it. The other two examples are more complicated because do has taken on a more noun-like character: the infinitive to do in the second example, and the gerund doing in the third. (I suppose that you could also read doing in the third example as a participle, which would change the meaning and the analysis, but I am using it as a gerund so that the three examples contain equivalent constructions.)
The constructions in the second and third examples are more than phrases, because they contain a subject and a verbal. But they are less than clauses, because the verb has no person or number and the construction therefore does not achieve a complete predicate. And to further complicate matters, the “subject” of the infinitive in the second example goes into the objective case.
For the second example, <I prefer you to do it>, I have a harder time imagining that the infinitive phrase to do it is really an adverb modifying prefer than I did with the analogous phrase in the OP. Saying that the phrase includes the infinitive’s subject (despite it being in the objective case) makes the analysis easier, because then the phrase can be the direct object. But doesn’t including the subject make it more than a phrase?
I look forward to a little research when I get back into the office on Monday. Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing from anyone else who wants to noodle this conundrum!
Okay, here’s an example, and I think you’re onto something, Brian
So it looks as if “her,” in our sample sentence, is the “subject” of the infinitive phrase “to create…” The infinitive phrase is the direct object of “enables.”
So it’s starting to look clearer. And then look what they say next:
Hmm…I’m still not entirely clear on this, maybe because I’ve never heard the term “actors” as a formal grammatical term.
And although clearly the actor should be in the objective case (“Toni Morrison’s genius enables she to create?” ewww!), I’m not sure why this is true. Logically, it seems to me as if it should be in the subjective case.
But this may be all the clarity we’re going to get.
Daniel
I can’t cite any authority on this point, but I am pretty sure that this construction is an unfortunate Latinism that stuck. An indirect statement in Latin puts the verb into the infinitive mood and its subject into the accusative case:
Malo illum ire.
I prefer him to go.
English imitated this illogical construction. But oddly, when English uses an actual indirect construction, such as I prefer that he go, the verb still goes into the infinitive mood (not I prefer that he goes), but the subject goes into the subjective case.
Go figure.
I wrote to the teacher who runs the website that Earl Snake-Hips Tucker cited, and he concurs in Earl’s view, citing Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, Third Course, p. 102.
Home and hitting the books.
There is such disagreement over this issue (not the issue in the OP, but the semi-hijack about the direct object of enables) evidently because professional grammarians disagree themselves. I found support both for my view, and for Earl Snake-Hips Tucker and DanielWithrow’s view. I have come around to the conclusion that, while my view is defensible, the view that Earl and Daniel were advocating makes more sense even though it relies on a somewhat nontraditional view of what constitutes a clause.
The question is, what is the direct object of the verb enables in <Toni Morrison’s genius enables her to create novels>? But the question turns, as I suggested, on the function of the pronoun her. Either the pronoun is itself the direct object, as I suggested, and the infinitive phrase to create novels is something else; or the direct object is the entire construction her to create novels, as Earl and Daniel suggested.
Harper’s English Grammar supports the view that an infinitive phrase can serve as an adverb:
John B. Opdycke, Harper’s English Grammar 139 (1965). And Harper’s also supports my view that the infinitive phrase here, even if it includes her, cannot function as a clause–which could serve as a direct object–because the verb has no person or number and the construction therefore does not achieve a complete predicate:
Id. at 224 (internal cross-reference omitted).
So what are the pronoun and the infinitive phrase? Harper’s says that they are the direct object and the “objective complement”:
Id. at 138. And just what is an “objective complement”? Basically a parallel direct object:
Id. at 41-42. Well, okay, then. The direct object of the verb enables must be the pronoun her, and the infinitive phrase to create novels is either an adverb or an objective complement. But to create novels doesn’t “mean the same thing as the direct object or explain or describe it,” so it must not be an objective complement. Therefore it must be an adverb. Like I said. (Let’s overlook for the moment the fact that the example labeled as an “objective complement” on page 138, <She made him (to) accept>, also doesn’t “mean the same thing as the direct object or explain or describe it.”)
But Harper’s hesitantly admits another possibility:
Id. at 230. So Harper’s acknowledges, but evidently disapproves, that “some authorities” take Earl and Daniel’s view.
The next reference that I checked, The Oxford English Grammar, is less squeamish about that view:
Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar § 6.10 at 329 (1996). Note that Example 5 draws an explicit parallel between the infinitive construction and the equivalent indirect statement, as Daniel and I were discussing in the last few posts. The OEG goes on to say that
Id., § 6.18 at 359.
The OEG evidently abandons the idea that a clause must contain a finite verb. That approach is consistent with the equivalence between the [subject in the objective case + infinitive phrase] construction and the indirect statement. And it makes good sense (setting aside the somewhat absurd retention of the objective case and infinitive mood from Latin)–better sense, IMO, than insisting on the traditional definition that an infinitive cannot (even with a subject) form a clause and resorting to an “objective complement” in order to explain the construction.