See Spot run

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

I must take some issue with your analysis of “See Spot run”. The object of the verb see is ‘Spot run’, not ‘Spot’. Had I wanted to say “See Spot,” I could have said just that. “Spot run’ is a clause, the object of the verb ‘see’; it consists of the infinitive, ‘run’ and its subject, ‘Spot’. You might ask why the verb isn’t inflected to agree with the subject, and the answer is that it isn’t a verb – it’s a verbal noun i.e., a word which is a noun, but being formed from a verb may still take a subject and an object. We might get some clues if we investigate another language; granted that language has a grammar all its own, which is different from that of English, but still, we might get some hints. In Spanish consider the sentence, “Quiero correr” (I want to run); we translate ‘correr’ as the infinitive ‘to run’. But in “Veo el niño correr” (I see the boy run), we translate this obvious infinitive as either (the infinitive) ‘run’ or the gerund ‘running’, and while boy is the obvious subject, the verb[al noun] is never inflected, and never translated as ‘to run’.

LINK TO COLUMN: How do you diagram the sentence, “See Spot run”? - The Straight Dope

2

I’m a li’l confused. Cecil doesn’t say that “Spot” is the direct object – that’s what the persons(s) asking the question said. The first part of the column (the stuff in italics) is the question, followed by Cecil’s answer, which pretty much agrees with you that the phrase “Spot run” is the object and etc etc uninflective infinite…

3

See Spot run.

Behold my small canine friend run the VAX 11/780.

Smart dog.

Observe my canine companion (in the act of) run(ning).
or

See Spot run (into a wall) (on the ground) (on water) (after the postman). How Spot is acting on his environment is inferred from the context. Or so we hope.

4

Here is how I would analyze this sentence. The notation I use is called generative grammar and has the advantage of not requiring a diagram, although building a diagram from it would be simple.

It begins with
S --> NP VP
which means a sentence consists (for the most part) as a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase. The next step is
NP --> empty
Okay the subject slot is vacuous in this case. It happens. Usually the implied subject is “you” Follow with
VP --> V Comp
verb followed its complement(s). Now the complement structure can be very complicated. It could be empty (we say the verb is used intransitively), consist of one or two NPs, a sentential complement, maybe adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc. I bet you $5 you can’t find a verb that that takes three objects. (Hint: the third object is sentential.)

The verb is “bet”. One object is “you”, the second is “$5” and the sentential complement is “you can’t find a verb that takes three objects”

Continuing, we note that “see”, like verbs of perception generally, can govern a naked infinitive (no “to”). In this case, then
Comp --> NP Inf
NP --> Proper noun --> Spot
Inf --> run

Note, but the way that proper nouns obey somewhat different rules that ordinary nouns, including that you cannot use a determiner (article or possessive or quantifier) with them. You would say “See the dog run”, but not “See the Spot run”, although “See the spot run” is fine.

Nobody said that grammar was easy. A student doing a project for me discovered a dictionary of verbs that talked about more than 50 classes of verbs, depending on their obligatory or optional complement structures. They would have said that when “see” and similar verbs take an NP Inf complement, the NP is interpreted both as an object of “see” and a subject of the infinitive.

5

Seen on a bumper sticker:


Oh, look. C code.
C code run.
Run, code, run.
Run, dammit, run!
6

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any linguistics, but this strikes me as nuts.

It’s a simple imperative with a noun phrase as the direct object.

See Spot run.
Watch me puke.
Make him pay.

They’re all the same, though I prefer the one from Mrs Buffy (my grade one teacher) over the ones from Mr Green and Mr Blonde.

The problem with the first sentence is that Spot appears to be some kind of Mattel wind-up toy having his tires pumped on Saturday morning TV.

Chia Pets! See them grow!

7

I just noticed that the pronouns in my examples are in the object form rather than the subject form, which they would normally have as a noun phrase. (I did say it had been a long time.)

First, let’s look for patterns:

See Bob go.
Bob goes wild.
See Bob go wild.
See Bob going wild.
I want to see Bob go.
I want to see Bob go wild.
I want to see Bob going wild.

The imperative parallels the later models.

Next, I tried this out at the Stanford parser. It tags “See” as VB rather than VBP, which means that “see” is imperative as I suspected (as it’s neither infinitive nor subjunctive, which are also tagged VB).

“Spot runs” comes out as a “simple declarative clause” consisting of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase. “Simple” means that some other confounding stuff isn’t present.

I find that it’s easy to confuse the Stanford parser. “See Bob run.” and “See Bob wave.” give different parses. (Don’t ask about “See wave bob.” or “Sea wave bob.”) However, I still believe the ones where the initial verb is tagged VB.

What I just skimmed via Google books from Imperative Clauses in Generative Grammar: Studies in Honour of Frits Beukema suggests that imperatives are an entire world unto themselves.

From Exploring Difficulties in Parsing Imperatives and Questions:

“However, parsing imperatives and questions involves a significantly different problem; even when all words in a sentence are known, the sentence has a very different structure from declarative sentences.”

It also seems to suggest that these parsers aren’t terribly reliable with this construction.

8

Reminds me of an old adolescent joke:

Oh Bob, let’s not park here!
Oh Bob, let’s not park!
Oh Bob, let’s not!
Oh Bob, let’s!
Oh Bob!
Oh!

9

Most of this discussion is way above my head. I’m a simple guy with a simple question: Why on earth did Cecil think that the clearly imperative “See Spot run” is a shortened version of the question “Do you see Spot run?”

10

Excellent question. I wondered that myself. I’d say see is clearly imperative.

11

Actually, “See Spot run” can be either an imperative or a question. But if it is a question, it should really have a question mark. A bit informal, no doubt, but “{verb phrase}” for “Do you {verb phrase}?” is common enough. Get it?

12

Linguistics has not always been Cecil’s strong point, and I guess he wanted a humorous way to dismiss the first possibility.

Functionally, the sentence is in fact clearly just an abbreviated form of See spot running–that is, see, here, is simply a shortened present participle, functioning as a modifier of spot. (To accept that answer wasn’t amusing enough for Cecil.) With all due respect, I’ll say that it isn’t necessary to go though generative grammar gymnastic contortions to grasp this, and we certainly shouldn’t do so just to placate the desire of the original questioner to validate the gratuitous practice of grade school sentence diagramming.

Within that dictionary of verb classes that Hari Sheldon referred to above, there probably are other instances of such essentially idiomatic behavior, and I would argue that it’s not necessary to jam a square-peg noun modifier into the round-hole complement category. Rather than saying “grammar was easy,” (and I’d never say that), I think we should just recognize, instead, that language is messy–often. I know that this can fly in the face of the instincts which motivate generative grammar, but when one does field work in linguistics it becomes easier to accept.

13

Cecil did not think that. He states that some “genius” contributed that, with genius being used ironically. He then dismisses that option as rewriting the sentence.

This is simply not correct. The sentence is not

[You do] see Spot run[ning].

It is not a description of the reader’s behavior. Rather, it is an instruction, an imperative

[You] see Spot run.

Spot is typically a pet dog, thus capitalized as a name. The dog is doing an activity, running. The sentence is an instruction for the reader to observe the dog perambulate at high speed.

[You] see Spot [to] run.

From a grammarian’s standpoint, the sentence is a complicated structure that is difficult to diagram. However, it makes it into simple reading primers because it is very easy to read. It is short with short, simple words. The point of those books is not to teach how to dissect sentences to understand their structure, the point of those books is to teach kids to recognize words and derive their meaning.

I agree with this. But in this instance, I would suggest the messy part is all the “understood” elements of the sentence mucking it up.

14

On the contrary, the sentence is quite simple. In the original article I have on this topic, someone suggested that “Spot run” was a clause with Spot as the subject. However, that theory can be disproved by substituting a pronoun for Spot. “See him run.” It could not be “See he run.” While the subject of a clause can not be in the objective case, the subject of an infinitive must be in the objective case. “Spot run” is simply a noun infinitive phrase functioning as the direct object of See. I have it diagrammed in a pdf document and in “sendraw” format, which I will attempt to upload. When and where I went to school, this was 8th grade English curriculum. Do “they” still teach that? Oh, I am a new user; the system will not allow me to upload an attachment.

15

Hello, and welcome. You will find this is an old topic, but we welcome new comments.

That is, in fact, disputable. Imperatives and infinitives are complex.

You are correct. That was one of the theories that was supplied to Cecil that he dismissed.

If you read the column, that is essentially what Cecil concluded. He used the term “objective infinitive”, which is what you describe.

In fact, Cecil cites a text that uses as examples, “I heard him sing, I see Spot run.”

While those are not structured as imperatives, they were cited to show the objective infinitive with omitted “to”.

I am curious about your version of a diagram. Unfortunately, this board does not host images. You would need to upload the image to a hosting site and then provide a link.

In any case, diagramming has never seemed useful to me. I guess as a tool to make one think about the structure, it has some value, but too much effort has to be spent on deciding how to draw the lines, and most of us are learning that as a secondary skill on top of figuring out the pieces.

How much detail goes into teaching sentence structure these days I haven’t a clue. I suspect it’s location dependent as well a public vs private, etc.

My limited sampling suggests it wasn’t a high priority here in Texas public schools 40 years ago or now. But that could just be observation bias. Too small of a sample set.

16

I think that the biggest issue with the sentence is that, in normal English usage, it’s very unusual (not impossible, but unusual) to use “see” in an imperative. Usually, we tell someone to look at something, not to see it.

17

I may be nuts.
I admit my speaking is iffy on a good day.
I use See as an imperative, often.

“See, I told you that would happen.”

“See, it’s like this,”

“See, Bayliss chase the ball!”

If that is what imperative means. See, I’m not really sure.

18

I think that “See” in those sentences is an interjection, not an imperative verb. The comma is a clue. You would never put a comma right after a transitive verb like that.

19

Actually, the imperative is the easy part of that sentence. Most of us learned about the understood “you” in the imperative case, and diagramming that is a simple special case.

It’s the “Spot run” part that causes all the headaches. Cecil’s cite shows examples without the imperative.

“I heard him sing.” No imperative, no present tense or “see”, but the “him sing” is the exact same case as “Spot run”.

20

Ah, thank you.