{"id":1850,"date":"2023-09-20T15:12:17","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T19:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2024-11-11T14:39:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T19:39:22","slug":"defectivity-english-more-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-english-more-observations\/","title":{"rendered":"Defectivity in English: more observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[This is part of a series of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/category\/language\/defectivity\/\">defectivity case studies<\/a>.]<\/p>\r\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-english\/\">an earlier post<\/a> I listed some defective verbs in my idiolect. After talking with our PhD student <a href=\"https:\/\/malanoski.ws.gc.cuny.edu\/\">Aidan Malanoski<\/a>, I have a couple additional generalizations to note.<\/p>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li>Aidan is fine with infinitival\u00a0BEWARE (e.g.,\u00a0<em>Caesar was told to beware the Ides of March<\/em>). I am not sure about this myself.\u00a0<\/li>\r\n<li>Aidan points out that SCRAM, SHOO, and GO AWAY (we might call them, along with BEWARE, &#8220;imperative-dominant verbs&#8221;) have a similarly restricted distribution. Roughly, our judgments are:<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>imperatives ok: <em>Scram<\/em>!\u00a0<em>Shoo<\/em>!\u00a0<em>Go away!\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\r\n<li>infinitives ok: <em>Roaches started to scram when I turned the lights on.\u00a0<\/em><em>She shouted for the pigeons to shoo. The waiters couldn&#8217;t wait for them to go away<\/em>.\u00a0<\/li>\r\n<li>gerunds marginal: <em>Scramming would be a good idea right about now. Just going away might be the best thing.<\/em><\/li>\r\n<li>Other\u00a0<em>-ing\u00a0<\/em>participles degraded: (past continuous) <em>Roaches started scramming when I turned the lights on<\/em>. (small clause)\u00a0<em>I saw the police scramming<\/em>.\u00a0<\/li>\r\n<li>Simple pasts degraded: <em>Roaches scrammed when I turned the lights on.\u00a0<\/em>(compositional reading only)\u00a0<em>He went away.<\/em><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>They point out that same <em>-ing <\/em>surface forms may differ in acceptability.\u00a0I also note that for me <em>shooed<\/em> [s.o.] <em>away<\/em> is fine as a transitive.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This is part of a series of\u00a0defectivity case studies.] In an earlier post I listed some defective verbs in my idiolect. After talking with our PhD student Aidan Malanoski, I have a couple additional generalizations to note. Aidan is fine with infinitival\u00a0BEWARE (e.g.,\u00a0Caesar was told to beware the Ides of March). I am not sure &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/defectivity-english-more-observations\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Defectivity in English: more observations&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defectivity","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2213,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}