Grammar Questions (1 sentence)

Factual Questions
1

I have a question about the grammatical correctness of this sentence:

A few things: Would I have to use the word ‘unable’ two times: “If you are unable to get in touch with him or unable to spend time with him”, or is the way it is in the quote okay?

What about using the word “to”… should I say “…or to spend time with him” or “…or spend time with him”

And what about “ask someone he is close with.” Does that work, or should it be “ask someone whom he is close with.” or “ask someone to whom he is close with.”? Is it okay to end a sentence with “with”?

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thanks

4

Let me answer the last question first. Yes, it is ok to end a sentence with “with”, unless you are a constipated English teacher. But it is not ok to end THIS sentence with “with”. Use “to”. Now is it grammatical? In a formal sense, undoubtedly it is. It is harder to know if it works. If the previous sentence clarified what you are going to ask someone he is close to, then I would judge that it works. As for repeating “unable” or “to”, I would probably omit them both, but it is not wrong to repeat “unable to” or “to” alone. What about, “ask someone whom he is close to” (or horror of horrors, “ask someone to whom he is close”)? Well, I would not say them, but that constipated English teacher would use the latter. The point is that there is a difference between being formally correct in the sense that you can parse it and assign consistent grammatical relationships in accordance with some formal rules of grammar and being an effective sentence. Consider the famous, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, which is formally correct but it is difficult if not impossible to assign a meaning to it.

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… close with.
… close to.
… close by.
… close behind.
… close on.
… close above.

All ok.

6

OK, yes. Interchangeable, no.

I admit freely that I can only speak for my own dialect, but “close by,” “… behind,” and “… above” in particular refer to physical proximity, which is not what I understood the original sentence to mean.

“Close on” usually connotes a temporal proximity in my experience. “The war started in December, and close on to that, Johnny enlisted.”

7

Not only do you not need a second “unable,” you don’t even need the second “to.” “…unable to get in touch with him or spend time…” works quite well.

“Spend time together” is not as clear as “spend time with him.” The reader/listener is apparently expected to mentally add the unstated “with him”: “…spend time together (with him)…” Yes it’s nitpicky, but there are other ways to construe “together” that don’t mean the same thing (for example, the speaker could be addressing two people and it could be taken to mean together with each other). I presume that trying to avoid repeating the phrase “with him” was the reason for saying “together.” However,…

…since it’s impossible to spend time with him WITHOUT having gotten in touch with him (either beforehand or at the instant of getting together with him), the whole “spend time with…” phrase is unnecessary and logically redundant. So I suggest:

“If you are unable to get in touch with him, ask someone [whom] he is close to.” The “whom” is implicit, and does not need to be stated.

“…ask someone close to him.” is more compact and elegant, but not necessarily the same thing. If the closeness is not reciprocal (e.g., he feels close to her but she doesn’t feel close to him) it could alter the meaning.

8

thanks for the responses, they are great to learn from. i do have a constipated english teacher, which is why i’m bringing this question here :confused:

Gary T: in the below sentence, Microsoft Word picks up a grammer error with “whom” and suggests I chance it to “who”. I’m guessing that Word is wrong here, and your right… but are you sure? just for curiositys sake
“If you are unable to get in touch with him, ask someone whom he is close to.”

and btw, i’m also curious about the use of lies and lays.
in the following sentence, my english teacher says I should use “lies” instead of “lays”.
“The perfect blue sky surrounds me, and beneath lays intensely vivid, green earth.”
and
"When looked at from the right angle, I can see past the reflections and into the shallow river’s foundation, where countless rocks lay, each of a slightly different color. "

should they be lays/lay or lies/lie?

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Your teacher is correct. Generally, the verb “lay” is what is called transitive, which means it takes an object. A hen lays an egg, a gambler lays a bet, a British person lays (sets) the table. After a long journey, you lay down your burden, but you then lie down on a bed in order to sleep. Thus, the earth and rocks in your respective sentences are examples of “what lies beneath”.

The page linked below is part of a site on which many common grammatical quandaries are discussed:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/lay.html

10

You don’t have to “lie down on a bed,” but merely “lie down” without the object. Animate objects “lie,” inanimate objects “lay.” Another odd use of “lay” is referring to boats at port, which “lay” in the harbor.

If you use the pedantically correct English, the sentence would read: “If you are unable to get in touch with him, ask someone to whom he is close.” You see now that “whom” is correct. The objective case always follows a preposition, unless the preposition is the beginning of a clause wherein the pronoun is the subject of the clause.

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Re who/whom: Yes, I’m sure. You can test it by inverting the word order and substituting he/him for who/whom. You would not say “close to he,” you would say “close to him.” Thus do not use who, use whom.

For the lie/lay situation, it helps to know the principle parts of these verbs.

For lie (=recline), they are LIE, LAY, LAIN. I like to lie in the sun. Yesterday I lay in the sun for hours. I have lain in the sun for years.

For lay (=place), they are LAY, LAID, LAID. I lay my clothes on the bed each morning. Yesterday I laid my new shirt on the bed. I have laid my clothes on the bed for years.

The confusion comes from LAY being used for the present tense of “lay” and for the past tense of “lie” combined with 80% percent of the population (including professional copywriters and scriptwriters and broadcasters who should damn well know better!) using LAY when they should use LIE.

In your examples, both sentences are in the present tense and lies/lie are correct. So:

“The perfect blue sky surrounds me, and beneath lies intensely vivid, green earth.” But if we shift to past tense, it would be: “The perfect blue sky surrounded me, and beneath lay intensely vivid, green earth.”

The second sentence has an additional problem: “When looked at from the right angle, I can…” is saying you can do whatever when YOU are looked at from the right angle. This is more obvious when we shift the word order a bit: “I, when looked at from the right angle, can…”. What you want here is “Looking at the right angle, I can…”. (To simplify the illustration, I’ll use “see” instead of “can see.” “Can see” is fine, and its past tense is “could see.” I just thought it clouded the tense recognition a bit.)

“Looking at the right angle, I see past the reflections and into the shallow river’s foundation, where countless rocks lie, each of a slightly different color.” And then in past tense: “Looking at the right angle, I saw past the reflections and into the shallow river’s foundation, where countless rocks lay, each of a slightly different color.”

When in doubt, use RECLINE or PLACE to determine whether you need LIE or LAY, then use RECLINE/RECLINED (or PLACE/PLACED) to verify which tense you are using. Then if you know the principle parts of the two verbs, you can select the right word to use.

12

I don’t think that’s correct. Inanimate objects take “lay” not “lie.” The reason that “The boat lay in port” is an exception, since normally the verb would be the past tense of “lay,” which is “laid,” but here it is the past tense of “lie.” It is an exception because the boat is an inanimate object.

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Aside from the “When looked at from the right angle, I can…” hijack, Gary T has it correct.

(or, he has correctly identified correct usage)

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I don’t think that’s correct. Inanimate objects take “lay” not “lie.”

I don’t know where that concept came from, but it strikes me as totally ridiculous. “Lay” denotes the action of placing something somewhere, and being transitive, requires an object of said action. Inaminate objects do not normally go around placing things. Usually they just lie there doing nothing.

While we’re at it: You don’t have to “lie down on a bed,” but merely “lie down” without the object. What object? There is no object. “On a bed” is an adverbial prepositional phrase modifying “lie” (telling where one is lying). You can “lie,” “lie down,” “lie on a bed,” or “lie down on a bed,” but there is no object involved in any of these cases. Now, if you were to “lay a book on a bed,” or “lay yourself down,” you would have an object (book or yourself, respectively) which is being laid down.

15

James Francis Kilpatrick.

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[anal]

Not to seem anal, but while talking about grammar, there are references to

“you are”

spelled “your” instead of “you’re”.
If you wish to give advice on grammar, you should check your own in your response.
[/anal]

Sorry. that particular error really gets to me. I’m really not anal. Honest.

17

That’s not the only error the OP made. Among other errors, he misspelled “grammar” and did not capitalize “English” (not to mention “I,” which I attribute to sloppiness.)

Correction. The source is James J. Kilpatrick, but I believe his full name is James J. Francis Kilpatrick.

18

barbitu8, I did a quick google on James J. Kilpatrick, and it appears he’s a political columnist. Perhaps a bit away from his area of expertise in this matter?

My dictionary has this as one of the definitions of “lie”: to be in a more or less horizontal position on some supporting surface: said of inanimate things. It’s the only mention of inanimate things to be found in the definitions of “lie” and “lay.” Furthermore, and this is not intended to be snide or boastful, I intently listened and read and mostly absorbed everything that came my way about grammar both in and out of school (including Sternvogel’s link above), and I have never before heard anything indicating that there is a distinction in using “lie” or “lay” depending upon whether an inanimate object is involved. I have to conclude somebody somewhere got mixed up about that point. I suspect you’ve been misled.

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James J. Kilpatrick writes a weekly column (Sundays) that is syndicated and appears in some newspapers on the English language (in addition to writing a political column on Fridays). He once resided in the city wherein I live (Charleston), and I had a passing acquaintance with him. (Whenever I jogged by his house and he was in the yard, I’d say “Hello.”) He now lives in Washington, DC. His email address is kilpatjj@aol.com.

He once wrote a column on this, and I asked him about a fence in the yard that had to be put up. I asked him whether the fence was lying on the ground or laying on the ground. He asserted that it was laying. I then asked him what if it were a dead person. He preferred “laying” again. I’ve asked him, and now you go ask him.

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Oh, I don’t need to ask him. I’ll certainly take your word for it that he misled you.

He is wrong.

http://jamesmskipper.tripod.com/jamesmskipper/grammar.html

http://www.m-w.com/wftw/02apr/041002.htm