complement marking

[Matthew Gordon]

Are there any verbs that take only pattern 2?
I was thinking maybe "take" (e.g. I take it that this counts), but maybe
this isn't the same structure?

-Matt, who's wishing he had paid more attention in Arnold Zwicky's class at
the LSA Summer Institute at OSU.


On 3/3/09 11:38 AM, "Arnold Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

> in our discussion, a lttle while back, of marking the complements of
> verbs, the case of
>    (1) V + that-S  and  (2)  V + it + that-S
> came up.  verbs differ as to which of these constructions they can
> occur with ("like" allows both, "hope" allows only (1)).  now, in
> Virginia Heffernan's The Medium column ("Photo Negative", about
> Google's Life magazine archive) in the 3/1/09 NYT Magazine (p. 15), we
> find
>
>   I get that many of these [photographs] are unpublished Kennedy
> pictures.
>
> this is an instance of (1), where i'd prefer (2), with "it" (the
> Google counts for "I get that the" and "I get it that the" are noisy,
> but seem roughly comparable).  the OED entry for "get" has a section
> (11b) on the verb with a clause as object, but it's labeled obsolete
> and rare (of course, i might have missed a subsection; the entry for
> "get" is large and sprawling).  my impression is that "get" in both
> (1) and (2) is informal in style.
>
> "get" seems to be another verb that is not comfortable with zero-
> marked clausal complements, in construction (3) V + S, even when no
> temporary potential ambiguity is induced by omitting "that":
>    ??I get I'll have to leave now.
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org