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Re: please make line-move-visual nil


From: Stephen Berman
Subject: Re: please make line-move-visual nil
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:21:14 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.93 (gnu/linux)

On Fri, 15 May 2009 16:58:02 +0900 Miles Bader <address@hidden> wrote:

> Stephen Berman <address@hidden> writes:
>> One not too rarely encountered (and to me fairly acceptable)
>> avoid+infinitive construction is when `avoid' is passivized with an
>> expletive subject: "It should be avoided to ...".  FWIW Google
>
> To my ear, "avoid to" is clearly incorrect (and I think my ear is pretty
> good).

I agree with you (I'm a native speaker of American English) about "avoid
to", i.e. in the active voice (and with an animate subject), but do you
think the construction I referred to is just as "clearly incorrect" (I
would rather say (un)acceptable)?  I think there's a pretty clear
difference in acceptability.  There are at least a few other verbs that
pattern with `avoid' in this respect.  For example, these are all
"clearly incorrect":

(1) We avoided/recommended/suggested/discouraged to arrive early.

in contrast to these, which are "correct" English:

(2) We avoided/recommended/suggested/discouraged arriving early.

When the main verb is passivized, an expletive subject is used, and the
complements are reversed, I think there's a similar contrast.  That is,
the following are completely unacceptable[1]:

(3) It should be avoided/
       is highly recommended/
       is strongly suggested/discouraged arriving early.

while I think these sound more or less fine (`avoided' less than the
others, but not completely bad, and clearly contrasting with (3)):

(4) It should be avoided/
       is highly recommended/
       is strongly suggested/discouraged to arrive early.

Do you find no acceptability contrast between (3) and (4)?

Steve Berman

Footnotes: 
[1] There is a marginal reading of (3) where the subject `it' refers to
`arriving early' (it's marginal in (3) because as normally written it is
set off by a comma).  But on the reading I mean `it' is an expletive,
non-referential.






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