The quick brown fox

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Michael Trittipo wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Stephanie Briggs<sdsures at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Ah, but the sentence doesn't say "The horse that was raced past the
>> barn fell" - ... and it's against the rules :P to add or subtract
>> words from the sentence.
>
> Actually, it's not against the rules of English to elide those parts
> of relative constructions. So Paul didn't subtract any words; he
> quoted someone who likes to elide the introducing complement, as
> many people do from time to time.
>
> "The cup that was thrown against the pillow stayed intact; the cup
> that was thrown against the wall broke."
>   >>>--->>>
> "The cup thrown against the pillow stayed intact; the cup thrown
> against the wall broke."
>
> The latter is exactly parallel to "the horse raced past the barn
> fell," where "raced" is not the past-tense of "race" but is rather
> the past participle in adjectival use: exactly the same meaning, and
> possibly more naturally said by many people than the form that
> doesn't elide the "that...was."

I thank you for your support, but I beg to differ on this point: "raced" 
is /not/ exactly parallel to "thrown" because "race" is inherently 
intransitive and "throw" is inherently transitive. On hearing/seeing 
"thrown," the listener/reader knows instantly that there must be a 
(logical) subject and a (logical) direct object, and even if one or the 
other is unstated, the listener/reader must infer one: "I was thrown [by 
someone/something]." The same cannot be said for "raced," which is so 
naturally and commonly intransitive that the listener/reader must be 
pushed against his habit and experience to construe it as a transitive 
(causative).

A more familiar example of an intransitive used as a causative is "walk":
	The dog walked down the street fell.
			[by its owner]
	The bride walked down the aisle was beautiful.
			[by her father]

Still, I would argue that "raced" as used in our original example /is/ a 
past participle in exactly the same way as "thrown." The big difference 
is that it's so rare for this verb that the listener/reader doesn't 
expect it.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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