Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought

(First two of four parts)

We normally use the pair of curved marks known as the parenthesis to indicate textual material that’s optional to our sentence or that’s simply an afterthought. This, for instance, is the role that the parenthesis performs in the following sentence: “Jennifer (who is my cousin by the way) has just won the Most Outstanding Youth Award for 2009.” But the parenthesis is actually much more than just a punctuation for such added material. Indeed, the parenthesis in general is not the punctuation mark being used per se but the word, phrase, or even a full sentence that it encloses within the sentence. And the punctuation mark for parenthetical material isn’t necessarily the pair of curved marks that we are very familiar with; it could be a pair of enclosing commas or dashes—even brackets—depending on the degree of punctuation required by the parenthetical statement.

This is what I clarified for English learners when I wrote the four-part essay below for my column in The Manila Times in January-February of 2008. This discussion on the parenthesis and its uses explains that while a parenthetical is basically added information, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable but could actually be organic to the sentence. I am now posting the entire four-part essay here to help Forum members use parentheticals more confidently as a tool for more precise and expressive writing.

The parenthesis and its uses

Part I

We are all familiar with the two curved marks that we know as the parenthesis ( ), but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence or passage by some form of punctuation. That punctuation can be those two curved marks, of course, but depending on the importance of the inserted information and the writer’s intention, it can also be a pair of enclosing commas or a pair of enclosing dashes.

Let’s take a look at the following examples:

(1) Parenthesis by comma: (a) “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

(b) “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

(2) Parenthesis by dashes: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.”

(3) Parenthesis by parentheses: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.”

In each of the three examples above, the information set off by the punctuation marks—whether by commas, dashes, or parentheses—is called a parenthetical, and its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically and semantically correct even without it. A parenthetical is basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. In fact, the punctuation chosen for a parenthetical largely determines its optionality or importance to the statement.

So the big question about parentheticals is really this: Under what circumstances do we use commas, dashes, or parentheses to punctuate or set off a parenthetical from a sentence?

In Example 1(a) above, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” is what’s known as a nonrestrictive relative clause. A nonrestrictive relative clause is a parenthetical that provides information that’s not absolutely needed to understand the sentence; in other words, it is nondefining information. The sentence will remain grammatically and semantically intact without it: “Ferdinand Magellan was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Without the nonrestrictive relative clause, however, the sentence loses a lot of valuable information about its subject, “Ferdinand Magellan”; in fact, the intended context for the statement disappears completely.

For such type of parenthetical, the most appropriate choice of punctuation is a pair of enclosing commas, as was used in the original sentence. It won’t do to punctuate a nonrestrictive relative clause with dashes or parentheses, for either of them would render the information optional, as we can see in these two versions of that sentence: “Ferdinand Magellan—who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521—was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” “Ferdinand Magellan (who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521) was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Both of these sentence constructions run counter to the writer’s original intention.

We must keep in mind, though, that the same parenthetical—“who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521”—would have become a restrictive relative clause had the subject been a generic noun like, say, “the explorer,” in which case the pair of enclosing commas would have been rendered unnecessary: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

We will continue this discussion in the next essay.

The parenthesis and its uses

Part II

In the preceding essay, I pointed out that if we substitute a generic noun for a proper noun that’s being modified by a nonrestrictive relative clause, the pair of commas enclosing that clause would be rendered unnecessary. Thus, the sentence “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães” takes the following form when its subject is replaced with the generic noun “the explorer”: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The absence of the enclosing commas indicates that the nonrestrictive relative clause has become a restrictive one.

Obviously, the following questions will come to mind when that happens: Why not leave those enclosing commas alone? What difference does it make if we let those commas stay even after changing “Ferdinand Magellan” to “the explorer”?

The reason lies in the basic grammatical difference between a proper noun and a generic noun. We will recall that a proper noun is one that designates a particular being or thing, and that as a rule in English, it is capitalized to indicate this fact. A proper noun, moreover, has this important characteristic: as a rule, it won’t accept a limiting or restrictive relative modifier to define it. By its very name, a proper noun is supposed to have already defined itself, making it one of a kind.

Now, we need to recall at this point that a relative clause or a “who”-parenthetical that comes after a proper noun—“Ferdinand Magellan” in this case—becomes a restrictive clause or limiting modifier when it’s not enclosed by a pair of commas. It is therefore grammatically incorrect for the subject “Ferdinand Magellan” to be followed by a relative clause that’s not enclosed by commas: “Ferdinand Magellan who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” will always need the pair of enclosing commas in such cases: “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

It’s an altogether different thing when we replace a proper noun with a generic noun in such sentence constructions. We will then have two grammatical choices. If our intention is to, say, make “the explorer” specifically refer to “Ferdinand Magellan” and to no other person, then we need to modify it with a restrictive relative clause—one without the enclosing commas, as was done previously: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

On the other hand, if by “the explorer” we mean any explorer at all who had claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown, we would need to modify that generic noun with a nonrestrictive clause or nonlimiting modifier instead: “The explorer, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The enclosing commas indicate that the person referred to isn’t unique; he might not have been Ferdinand Magellan.

Now let’s evaluate the second sentence that I gave in last Saturday’s column as an example of parenthesis by comma: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” Here, the parenthe­tical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” is what is known as the appositive phrase. It is a statement that serves to explain or identify the noun or pronoun that comes before or after it.

The appositive phrase is an extremely useful grammatical device for giving context and texture to what otherwise might be very bland or uninformative sentences. We will discuss it in detail in the next essay.

(To be continued in next week's posting)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The long fight against the misuse of the subjunctive

In my experience as an editor, the misuse of the subjunctive—perhaps on a par with subject-verb disagreements—is one of the most common English grammar mistakes. Indeed, the sheer frequency of subjunctive misuse gives me the impression that the subjunctive isn’t taught at all in school, and if it is, those teaching it may not be teaching it well enough or perhaps few of those they teach get to understand it properly. I say this because many of the English-language manuscripts I have copyedited over the years, whether written by college students, company personnel, or professional newspaper or magazine writers, would flub their subjunctive sentences with disturbing regularity.

Looking back, I’d say that a full 70 percent of the writers I edited would write a subjunctive sentence incorrectly like this: “If by chance Ms. Tessie gets to read this “sumbong,”* may I also suggest that she develops a team who can reach out to people who encounter problems or difficulties with their various business units.” The correct subjunctive construction of that sentence is, of course, “If by chance Ms. Tessie gets to read this “sumbong,” may I also suggest that she develop a team who can reach out to people who encounter problems or difficulties with their various business units”—with the “s” in “develops” dropped in the correct version. At one time, in fact, I wrote in my column about a former editor in chief of a major broadsheet who consistently misused the subjunctive in his regular column, and, as far as I know, he still uses it wrongly to this day.

The subjunctive usage in print journalism left so much to be desired that in 2005, I even ran a four-part series on the subject in my weekly column in The Manila Times (those five columns now form part of my third book, Give Your English the Winning Edge). But it looks like that series was to no avail as far as one or two of the major Metro Manila broadsheets are concerned, as can be seen in My Media English Watch this week where I dissect still another subjunctive misuse, this time by another newspaper columnist.

Anyway, to make sure that all Forum members don’t make the same recurrent mistake in their subjunctive usage, I am posting in the Forum my lead essay for that four-part series on the English subjunctive. To those who won’t find this essay enough instruction on subjunctive usage, though, I suggest that they get a copy of Give Your English the Winning Edge for a much more detailed discussion.

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*Sumbong – Tagalog term for “complaint.”

The proper use of the English subjunctive

The wrong use of the English subjunctive—the mood of the language that allows us to speak of acts or states not as they really are but as possibilities or as outcomes of our wishes, desires, or doubts—recurs very often in Philippine journalism but hardly anybody makes a case against it. I have actually come across several instances of such misuse during the three years that I have been writing this column, but I let all of them pass without comment on the presumption that they were simply typographical or misreading errors. A few days ago, however, I came across a sentence in a newspaper column that left no doubt that it was unknowingly misusing the subjunctive. The construction used two verbs in a row in the incorrect subjunctive form, so I was sure that typographical error was not the culprit this time. The sentence, quoted verbatim here except for the subject (I used a fictitious name to avoid giving any political color to this grammar discussion), runs as follows: “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimizes his public appearances or goes on self-exile.”

At first blush, of course, there seems to be nothing wrong with that sentence. After all, “Mr. Romano” is in the third-person singular, so it stands to reason that the verbs expressing his actions, “minimizes” and “goes,” should also be in the third person singular. This happens not to be the case, however. By some quirk in English usage, verbs in the singular third-person subjunctive ignore the subject-verb agreement rule. They drop the “-s” or “-es” at their tail ends and take the base form of the verb (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”), so the verbs “minimizes” and “goes” become “minimize” and “go” instead. Thus, strange as it may seem, the correct construction of our subjunctive sentence specimen above is this: “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimize his public appearances or go on self-exile.” (Unfortunately, when there’s only one operative verb in a subjunctive “that”-clause, copyeditors and proofreaders who don’t fully understand the subjunctive simply restore the missing “-s” or “-es,” so the wrong usage often gets into print looking simply like a typographical error.

The corrected sentence construction above is the so-called “necessity or parliamentary motion” or “jussive” form of the subjunctive. (In linguistics, “jussive” means an expression of command.) These two highly formal terms sound intimidating, but they neatly capture the insistent attitude of the speaker in this form of the subjunctive, which occur in subordinate “that”-clauses that state an implied command or indirectly express a wish, desire, intention, or necessity. We will discuss the particulars of subjunctive usage in much greater detail later on, but first, we need to clearly understand the behavior of the third-person form of operative verbs in subjunctive “that”-clauses.

Contrary to how verbs generally behave, verbs in present-tense subjunctive “that”-clauses don’t change form at all. In our subjunctive sentence specimen, for instance, the base verb forms “minimize” and “go” remain unchanged regardless of what number or person the subject takes. Look at the form those verbs take in the first person (“I,” “we”): “It is not enough that I minimize my public appearances or go on self-exile.” “It is not enough that we minimize our public appearances or go on self-exile.” In the second person (both the singular and plural “you”): “It is not enough that you minimize your public appearances or go on self-exile.” However, in the third-person singular (“he,” “she,” or actual name), we would expect these verbs to obey the subject-verb agreement rule: add “-s” or “-es” to their tail ends to become “minimizes” and “goes.” But the third-person subjunctive ignores that rule, too, using instead the verb’s base form like what the first person and second person forms do. This results in the following constructions as the correct subjunctive usage for the third person singular in the present tense: “It is not enough that he [she] minimize his [her] public appearances or go on self-exile.” “It is not enough that Mr. Romano minimize his public appearances or go on self-exile.”

Admittedly, this prescription for the subjunctive strongly goes against the grain of what most of us have learned about English usage. This is why many people remain doubtful and suspicious of the subjunctive and will actually go at great lengths to avoid using it. No matter how we feel about it, however, the subjunctive is a very important form of the English language, so we need to clearly understand its unique function and usage if we want to make ourselves truly proficient in our English. (July 11, 2005)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 11, 2005, © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Reductions to give more punch and zing to prose

One who achieves enough mastery of English grammar soon discovers that in certain cases, the language allows its sentences to be streamlined for conciseness and easier articulation. A particular clause can sometimes be reduced to a phrase, which, of course, is structurally simpler than the former; for example, in the sentence “Countries that are near the equator have hot, humid climates,” the clause “that are near the equator” can be reduced to the phrase “near the equator”—the words “that” and “are” have been dropped—so the sentence reads more succinctly as follows: “Countries near the equator have hot, humid climates.” If need be, in fact, that same clause can be more severely reduced to the single-word “equatorial”—an adjective—so the sentence reads even more concisely as follows: “Equatorial countries have hot, humid climates.” Such reductions, of course, will largely depend on the tone, pacing, and style desired for the exposition or narrative, but it’s a great help to the writer to know all the reduction possibilities at his or her command.

In the two-part essay below that I wrote for my column in The Manila Times almost a year ago, I look into the various ways of reducing adjective clauses to adjective phrases as well as the limits to be encountered when making such reductions. I’m sure the discussions will prove helpful to those looking for ways to give more punch and zing to their prose.

Reducing adjective clauses to adjective phrases

Part I

Both adjective phrases and adjective clauses serve to modify nouns and pronouns—meaning that they identify or give additional information about the subject or about the object receiving the action in a sentence. However, while an adjective phrase can simply be any kind of modifying phrase—perhaps a series of adjectives, an adjective modified by an adverb, a complement, a prepositional phrase, or a participle phrase—the adjective clause works as a dependent or subordinate clause in a sentence, and as such must have a subject and an operative verb.

To be able to do its work, the adjective clause (also called the relative clause) needs to link itself to the main clause of a sentence by making use of one of the following: the relative pronouns “that,” which,” “who,” “whom,” and “whose” and the pronouns “when” and “where.” The adjective clause can then function in any of three ways: as modifier of the subject in the main clause, as modifier of the object of the operative verb in the main clause, and as object of the preposition.

Now, consider the following two sentences: “Employees who are working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits.” “The three applicants didn’t possess the skills that we needed for the position.” The first uses an adjective clause, “who are working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits,” to modify the subject “employees,” and the second, “that we needed for the position,” to modify the object of the operative verb in the main clause, which is “skills.”

We will see that in the case of the first sentence, even if both the relative pronoun “who” and the operative verb “are” are dropped from the adjective clause “who are working on contractual basis,” the sentence will still work perfectly: “Employees working on contractual basis are not entitled to regular company benefits.” The second sentence, too, will actually read and sound better when the relative pronoun “that” is dropped from the adjective clause “that we needed for the position:” “The three applicants didn’t possess the skills we needed for the position.”

What actually happened here was that we were able to reduce the adjective clauses into adjective phrases. Indeed, whenever possible and desirable, an adjective clause that uses the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” can be reduced into an adjective phrase.

Here, to begin with, are three of the most common ways of effecting such a reduction:

(1) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is in the active form, drop the relative pronoun and convert the operative verb to its progressive form. For example, the adjective clause “who work as full-time professionals” in the sentence “Women who work as full-time professionals are more likely to remain unmarried” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “working as full-time professionals” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Women working as full-time professionals are more likely to remain unmarried.”

(2) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is already in the progressive form, simply drop the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be.” For example, the adjective clause “that are living in the wild” in “Animals that are living in the wild sometimes no longer reproduce when kept in zoos” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “living in the wild” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Animals living in the wild sometimes no longer reproduce when kept in zoos.”

(3) When the operative verb in the adjective clause is in the passive form, drop the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be.” For example, the adjective clause “who are provided proper nutrition” in “Indigent children who are provided with proper nutrition can grow into productive members of society” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “provided with proper nutrition” to make the sentence more concise, as follows: “Indigent children provided with proper nutrition can grow into productive members of society.” (December 27, 2008)

Part II

We saw in the previous essay that generally, adjective clauses that use the relative pronouns “who,” “which,” and “that” can be reduced by dropping the relative pronoun and the form of the verb “be” used in the adjective clause. For example, in the sentence “Many politicians who are elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms,” the adjective clause “who are elected to office” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “elected to public office” to produce this more concise, forthright sentence: “Many politicians elected to public office often treat their positions as family heirlooms.”

Recall that adjective clauses, which are also called relative clauses, can either be restrictive or nonrestrictive. It is restrictive when it provides essential information about the subject of the sentence, as the clause “that has just ended” in “The year that has just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” On the other hand, it is nonrestrictive when it provides information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence (as indicated by the commas setting the clause off from the main clause), as the clause “which was uninhabited a decade ago” in “The island, which was uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”

Now, whether restrictive or nonrestrictive, an adjective clause can often be reduced to an adjective phrase to make the sentence more concise. In the first example given in the preceding paragraph, for instance, the restrictive adjective clause “that has just ended” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “just ended” to yield this sentence: “The year just ended was notable for its severe economic turbulence.” Similarly, in the second example, the nonrestrictive adjective clause “which was uninhabited a decade ago” can be reduced to the adjective phrase “uninhabited a decade ago” to yield this sentence: “The island, uninhabited a decade ago, is now a world-class resort.”

Note that when a nonrestrictive adjective clause modifying the subject of a sentence is reduced to an adjective phrase, as in the example above, the adjective phrase can alternatively be placed in front of the subject of the sentence: “Uninhabited a decade ago, the island is now a world-class resort.” This can’t be done in the case of reduced restrictive adjective clauses. In fact, in the case of the first sentence with the restrictive adjective clause reduced to an adjective phrase, putting “just ended” up front yields this fractured sentence: “Just ended, the year was notable for its severe economic turbulence.”

We must also beware that it isn’t always possible to reduce an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. For example, in the sentence “The rain that fell in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year,” it’s not possible at all to reduce the adjective clause “that fell in torrents this morning.” To simply drop the relative pronoun “that” from the adjective clause produces this fractured sentence “The rain fell in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year;” on the other hand, following the first reduction procedure described in Part I of this essay, to drop “that” and convert “fell” to the progressive-form “falling” to reduce the adjective clause to the adjective phrase “falling in torrents this morning” yields this semantically dubious, time-skewed sentence, “The rain falling in torrents yesterday was the heaviest this year.”

For an even better feel of the limits of adjective clause reduction, try doing it for this sentence: “Customers who have missed the show are disappointed.” (Were you able to do it?)

Indeed, we need to play it by ear when faced with the choice of reducing an adjective clause to an adjective phrase. If the reduction makes the sentence sound better without altering its sense, go right ahead. But if the reduction doesn’t sound right or changes the meaning of the sentence, simply leave the adjective clause the way it is, relative pronoun and all. (January 3, 2009)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 27, 2008 and January 3, 2009, © 2008 and © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Verbs for actions that we don’t do ourselves

Either by choice or circumstance, there are some things that people won’t do themselves but would rather ask, allow, or force other people to do for them. One reason is that perhaps the task is beneath their dignity to do; another is that directly doing it to or with the other person may be too unpleasant, so it’s better done through a third party; and still another is that the act could be patently immoral, illegal, or criminal, so it needs to be done by another person—perhaps a hired hand—with less or no scruples at all.

Verbs that are used to denote such actions are called causative verbs. There aren’t many of them, like “have,” “let,” “allow,” “cause,” and “ask,” but they are unlike most verbs in that they need to be followed by an object and an infinitive, as in “I asked them to mop the floor” (“them” is the direct object of the causative verb “asked,” and “to mop” is the infinitive, followed by “floor” which is its direct object). An ordinary verb for an action that you do yourself, of course, is immediately followed by the direct object, as in “I mopped the floor.”

In the essay below that I wrote for my column in The Manila Times almost four years ago, I explain the mechanics and construction of causative verbs and throw in a brief explanation of factitive verbs as well. I trust that Forum members will find this essay an instructive refresher on the usage of these two types of verbs.

Using causative and factitive verbs

When an awful act or serious mistake is made, particularly one that leads to a disastrous or tragic outcome, rare indeed is the soul that comes out in the open to take the blame for it. The usual response of the culpable is to ascribe the deed to somebody else or something else: “They had me scoop the money from the vault at gunpoint.” (The perpetrator of an inside job is trying to extricate himself from the crime.) “An earthquake made the mountain unleash the deadly mudslide.” (Actually, loggers had ruthlessly stripped the mountain of every inch of its forest cover.) “The steel gate’s collapse caused the people to stampede.” (The crowd-control measures simply were too puny for so large a mass of humanity aiming to get rich quick.)

The English language has, in fact, evolved a special verb form to make people avoid acknowledging responsibility—if only for the moment—when caught in such situations. That verb form is the causative verb, which carries out an action that causes another action to happen. In the three sentences given as examples above, in particular, “have” is the causative verb in the first, causing the action “scoop” to happen; “make” is the causative verb in the second, causing the action “unleash” to happen; and “cause” is the causative verb in the third, causing the action “stampede” to happen. In each case, the crime or calamitous outcome is acknowledged but no one is accepting responsibility for it.

Causative verbs are, of course, not only meant to make people avoid taking responsibility for things that have gone sour or disastrous. In general, they are used to indicate the sort of actions that people don’t do themselves but allow, ask, or force other people to do: “Emily’s supervisor permitted her to leave early today.” “Our landlady reminded us to pay our overdue rent.” “The thieves forced the tourists to hand over their jewelry.”

Note that in a causative construction, the subject doesn’t actually do the action of the operative verb but only causes the object to do that action. In the last example above, for instance, the subject is “the thieves” and the object is “the tourists,” and the causative verb “force” makes this object do the action of handing over the jewelry.

The other most commonly used causative verbs are “allow,” “assist,” “convince,” “employ,” “help,” “hire,” “let,” “motivate,” “remind,” “require,” and “urge.” When used in a sentence, practically all of these causative verbs are followed by an object (a noun or pronoun) followed by an infinitive: “We allowed foreigners to invest in the local mining industry.” “The recruiter convinced me to leave for Jeddah at once.” “The desperate applicant employed deceit to get the plum job.”

The only notable exceptions to this pattern are the causative verbs “have,” “make,” and “let.” They are followed by a noun or pronoun serving as an object, but this time what follows the object is not an infinitive but the base form of the verb (meaning its infinitive form without the “to”): “I had my fellow investors sign the incorporation papers yesterday.” “They made him finish writing the book in only five weeks.” “We let the students pick the class schedules they want.”

Like the causative verb, another type of verb that exhibits peculiar behavior is the so-called factitive verb. While the usual transitive verb can take only one direct object, a factitive verb actually needs two of them. There are only a few of its kind, however, among them “choose,” “elect,” “judge,” “adjudge,” “make,” “name,” and “select.”

Here’s how a factitive verb works: “The prestigious finance magazine last night chose our company “Best at Consumer Goods” in its annual poll.” Here, “choose” is the factitive verb, “our company” is the direct object, and “‘Best at Consumer Goods’” is the objective complement—all three in tight, uninterrupted interlock. (February 20, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 20, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.