HOW FINITE VERBS DIFFER FROM NON-FINITE VERBS

When finite verbs take the form of verbals

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Let’s start by reacquainting ourselves with the verbals—the infinitives, the gerunds, and the participles. All three are once-upon verbs transformed by grammatical alchemy into noun forms (in the case of infinitives and gerunds) and adjectives (in the case of participles).

This time, let’s just focus on how verbs are classified in form and function into “finite verbs” and “non-finite verbs.” Precisely what are these two forms and how do they differ?

A verb in its finite form

A verb, as we all know, is a word that serves as the grammatical center of the predicate of a sentence and expresses an act, occurrence, or state of being. It is “finite” if it actually shows tense (past, present, or future), person (first person, second person, or third person), and number (singular or plural).

Here are sentences that use finite verb forms expressing an act or occurrence: “I run.” “He runs.” “We ran.” And here are sentences that use different forms of the linking verb “be” to express a state of being: “I am hungry.” “She was hungry.” “They were hungry.” All of these verbs have duration, meaning that they happen at some point in time, and they change in form—inflect—depending on tense, person, and number. In sum, finite verbs are functioning as “true” verbs.

When a verb assumes non-finite forms

 

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In contrast to finite verbs, a verb becomes non-finite when it assumes a form that has no duration and cannot take tense, person, and number. We can liken non-finite verbs to actions that congealed as they were taking place, as in a freeze-framed scene from a movie. They become what are known in grammar as the verbals. The verb “take,” for instance, can assume the non-finite forms “to take” (infinitive), “taking” (gerund), and “taken” (participle). These three forms no longer function as verbs but serve as nouns or adjectives instead.

Let’s look closer at how these non-finite verbs work.

As an infinitive phrase (noun): “To take her hand would not be advisable.” “I have never wanted to take her place.”

Gerund phrase (noun): “Taking her hand would not be advisable.” “I have never considered taking her place.”

Past or present participle (adjective): “The taken seat was the cause of their quarrel.” “Taking seats without permission is impolite.”
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The above discussions have been excerpted from my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, July 5, 2004, © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

COMPANION READING IN JOSE CARILLO'S ENGLISH FORUM:
"The perfect infinitive and perfect gerund forms and their usage"
https://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=6577.0

THE CHOICE BETWEEN GERUNDS, FULL INFINITIVES, OR BARE 1NFINITIVES

Precisely When To Use Gerunds, Full Infinitives, or Bare Infinitives

For many nonnative speakers or learners of English, it’s difficult enough deciding whether to use a gerund or an infinitive for certain sentence constructions, but the problem becomes even more baffling when neither makes the sentence work properly or—at the very least—doesn’t make that sentence sound right. In such cases, in fact, lopping off the “to” from the full infinitive form to yield what’s called the bare infinitive becomes necessary to put the sentence on the right footing.

Such a grammatical dilemma was recently presented to me by an Iran-based English teacher towards the end of 2013, to analyze and resolve which I wrote a three-part essay for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2014. I am now posting all three parts of that column in this Blogspot retrospective for the benefit of everyone who still get similarly stumped by the gerund-infinitive conundrum. 

Part 1 – The choice between the gerund and the infinitive

The English teacher in Iran wrote about getting perplexed by the following sentences involving infinitives and gerunds:

“Please take a look at Sentences 1 and 2 below:

“(1) ‘Rather than drive to New York in the snow, we decided to stay home and watch the game on television.’

“(2) ‘Rather than running away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.’

“As you can see, in Sentence 1, after ‘rather than,’ the bare infinitive ‘drive’ is used, while in Sentence 2, an ‘-ing’ form of the verb is used. Why? I’m really confused. What do we need after the ‘rather than’—a bare infinitive or an ‘-ing’ form? How do we decide which one to use?”

I replied to Farhad that the question involves two grammatical aspects: whether to use an infinitive or gerund, and whether to use a full infinitive or bare infinitive.

For a better understanding of these grammatical forms, recall that infinitives and gerunds are both verbals, or words that combine the characteristics of a verb and a noun. As a rule, an infinitive has the form “to + verb stem,” as in “to watch” functioning as a noun, while a gerund is a form of the verb that ends in “-ing,” as in “watching” likewise functioning as a noun. (A third kind of verbal, the participle, combines the characteristics of a verb and an adjective—as in the participle “watched” in the sentence “A watched pot never boils.”)

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Being functionally nouns, both infinitives and gerunds can be used as subject, object, or complement, but whether an infinitive or gerund will properly work as such is primarily determined by the operative verb of the sentence.

Take Sentence 1 above: “Rather than drive to New York in the snow, we decided to stay home and watch the game on television.”

Let’s put that sentence in its normal, straightforward form so we can analyze it better: “We decided to stay home and watch the game on television rather than drive to New York in the snow.” Here, it’s clear that the operative verb is “decided,” and that “to stay home and watch the game on television” and “drive to New York in the snow” are both infinitive phrases serving as its direct objects—meaning that they are acting as nouns receiving the action of the verb “decided.”

The difference between these two infinitive phrases, however, is that the first,  “to stay home and watch the game on television,” is a full infinitive phrase, while the second, “drive to New York in the snow,” is a bare infinitive phrase, having dropped the function word “to.” The sentence is none the worse for it, though, showing that the infinitive “to drive” can take its bare infinitive form in that sentence without messing up its grammar and syntax.

Now let’s see if that sentence will still work correctly if it uses the full infinitive “to drive” instead: “We decided [i]to stay home and watch[/i] the game on television[i] rather than to drive to New York[/i] in the snow.” The grammar and syntax of that sentence remain airtight, but I must hasten to add that this doesn’t hold true in all cases. Indeed, several other factors come into play on whether a full infinitive or bare infinitive will work in a sentence.

Before taking up that aspect, however, let’s find out first if we can replace the infinitive phrases in Sentence 1 with their corresponding gerund forms: “We decided staying home and watching the game on television rather than driving to New York in the snow.” This time the sentence no longer reads and sounds right—clearly indicating that “decide” as operative verb won’t accept gerund phrases as direct objects. 

We will discuss the ground rules for choosing between infinitives and gerunds in Part 2 of this essay below.

Part 2 – Ground rules for choosing between gerunds and infinitives   

Let’s continue our discussion on the choice between infinitives and gerunds and between full infinitives and bare infinitives in constructing sentences. 

In Part 1 of this essay, we left off with the finding that the following sentence that uses infinitive phrases as direct object of the operative verb “decided” is grammatically airtight: “We decided to stay home and watch the game on television rather than to drive to New York in the snow.” However, when the infinitive phrases are replaced by their gerund phrase equivalents, the sentence no longer reads and sounds right: “We decided staying home and watching the game on television rather than driving to New York in the snow.”

The problem is that the verb “decide” won’t accept the gerund phrases as direct objects in that sentence. In English, it is the operative verb that determines whether an infinitive or gerund can serve as subject, object, or complement, and it does so following these four ground rules:  

1. Use the infinitive as subject when denoting potential, the gerund when denoting actuality or fact. Potential: “To win will be great.” (“Winning will be great” works just as well, for “win” is one of those verbs that can take either the gerund or infinitive form to denote potential.) Actuality or fact: “Winning made him ecstatic.” (The infinitive doesn’t work: “To win made him ecstatic.”)

2. Use the infinitive as complement or object when denoting future ideas and plans, the gerund when denoting acts done or ended. Infinitive for future ideas and plans: “Her ambition is to teach.” (But not, “Her ambition is teaching.”) Gerund for acts done or ended: “She picked teaching.” (But not, “She picked to teach.”)

3. Use the infinitive as complement for single or repeated action, the gerund for ongoing action. Single action: “I came here to study.” (But not, “I came here studying.”). Repeated action: “She goes there to rest.” (But not, “She goes there resting.”). Ongoing action: “He does selling on the side.” (But not, “He does to sell on the side.”).

4. Use the infinitive as object for a request, instruction, or causation; the gerund for attitude and unplanned action. Request: “He asked me to rehearse.” (But not, “He asked me rehearsing.”). Instruction: “She told me to wait.” (But not, “She told me waiting.”). Causation: “They forced him to abdicate.” (But not, “They forced him abdicating.”). Attitude: “He thinks sailing is risky.” (But not, “He thinks to sail is risky.”) Unplanned action: “He found dancing to his liking.” (But not, “He found to dance to his liking.”).

These ground rules provide us with a clearer conceptual framework for using infinitives or gerunds, but we must firmly keep in mind that the primary basis for the choice is the operative verb of the sentence. We have to get used to the fact that some operative verbs can take infinitives, others can take gerunds, and the rest can take both. Making the correct choice won’t be easy, but ultimately, it’s the one that makes the sentence read logically and sound right.

Now let’s go back to Sentence 2 as presented by Farhad H.: “Rather than running away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.” He asked: Shouldn’t that sentence use the bare infinitive phrase “run away” instead?

That sentence obviously doesn’t read logically or sound right with the gerund phrase “running away,” but neither does it do so with the full infinitive phrase “to run away”: “Rather than to run away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.” However, it makes sense and reads perfectly well with the bare infinitive phrase “run away”: “Rather than run away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.” Why is that?

In Part 3 below which is the final final part of this discussion, we’ll take up the rules for choosing between full infinitives and bare infinitives.

Part 3 – Grammatical situations that require the bare infinitive 

In Part 2 of this essay, we saw that the following sentence with the full infinitive phrase “to run away” doesn’t sound right: “Rather than to run away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.” However, it reads perfectly well when that full infinitive phrase is changed to its bare infinitive form: “Rather than run away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.”

So the question is: Are there hard-and-fast rules for using the full infinitive or the bare infinitive? There's actually none; all that can really be said is that in general, the primary determining factor is the operative verb of the sentence. Indeed, we’ll only find out which of them works—or works best—by first using the full infinitive by default. When it doesn’t work, the bare infinitive form usually will—unless, as we saw in our previous discussions, it’s only the infinitive’s gerund equivalent that can do the job.

At this point, we can now categorically answer the original question of Iran-based Forum member Farhad H. that launched this discussion: It’s in the nature of English that when an infinitive or infinitive phrase is preceded by the adverbs “rather,” “better,” and “had better” or by the prepositions “except,” “but,” “save” (in the sense of “except”), and “than,” it’s highly advisable to use the bare infinitive in the sentence.

Let’s try out those specific instances that require the bare infinitive: “We would rather commute than drive at this hour.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “We would rather to commute than to drive at this hour.”) “With the mess you’re in, you had better hire a lawyer.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “With the mess you’re in, you had better to hire a lawyer.”) “We tried everything except beg.” (Iffy with full infinitive: “We tried everything except to beg.”) “They did nothing but complain.” (Iffy with full infinitive: “They did nothing but to complain.”)  

Keep in mind though that as a rule, the verb auxiliaries “shall,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “may,” “might,” “can,” “could,” and “must” should always be followed by a bare infinitive: “I shall scold them.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “I shall to scold them.”) “We may go there tonight.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “We may to go there tonight.”) “You must find her at once.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “You must to find her at once.”)

When the operative verb is a perception verb like “see,” “feel,” “hear,” or “watch” and it’s followed by an object, the object complement should be in the bare infinitive form for the sentence to work properly: “We watched him perform the role and we saw him bungle it so badly.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “We watched him to perform the role and we saw him to bungle it so badly.”) “I heard her scream at a fellow justice during a full session.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “I heard her to scream at a fellow justice during a full session.”)

A bare infinitive is likewise needed as object complement when the operative verb is the helping verb “let” or “make” followed by an object: “Let me call you sweetheart.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “Let me to call you sweetheart.”) “She always makes me feel brand new.” (Faulty with full infinitive: “She always makes me to feel brand new.”)

The helping verb “help” itself, however, can take either a full infinitive or a bare infinitive as object complement. The sentence sounds formal with the full infinitive: “She helped them to mount the coup d’etat.” It’s relaxed, informal-sounding with the bare infinitive: “She helped them mount the coup d’etat.”

Always remember, though, that all of these uses of the bare infinitive should be treated as exceptions to the general rule. When in doubt, use the full infinitive first to see if the sentence will work properly.

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This three-part discussion originally appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, January 11, 18, and 25, 2014, © 2014 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

GETTING TO KNOW THE PARENTHESIS BETTER

Parenthesis—Not Just That Familiar Pair of Curved Marks in English Exposition But Any Amplifying Material

Part I - Parenthesis is basically added information in a sentence               that isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable

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 (they are called brackets in British grammar), 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 basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. 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.”

Part II - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or afterthought

In Part I above, 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 Part I above 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 Part III. 

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.

Part III - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or afterthought

We will now discuss the appositive phrase found in the following sentence that I earlier presented for evaluation in Part I: “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.” The appositive phrase here is, of course, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” It’s an added statement that gives context and texture to this vague, bare-bones sentence: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

On closer scrutiny, we will find that the appositive phrase is actually a simplified form of the nonrestrictive relative clause in this sentence: “Cleopatra, who was 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.” It is, in fact, the relative clause “who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” with both the relative pronoun “who” and the linking verb “was” taken out.

That grammatical streamlining process produces a modifier in noun form—“the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later”—that is in apposition or equivalent to the noun form it modifies—“Cleopatra.” Indeed, appositive phrases are a compact and concise way of describing people, places, and things or of qualifying ideas within the same sentence. They allow us to provide more details about a subject without having to start another sentence—a process that sometimes undesirably slows down the pace of an unfolding exposition or narrative.

The use of appositive phrases, we now will probably recall, is also one of the most efficient ways of combining sentences. It allows a related statement from another sentence to be folded into the sentence that precedes it. The sentence that we are evaluating now, for instance, has combined these two sentences: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire. She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” By making the statement in the second sentence an appositive in the first, we get a sentence that’s richer in texture and more interesting to read: “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.”

Such constructions also have the added virtue of allowing us to develop the basic statement of a sentence unimpeded. Assume that we have already written this basic statement: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” If we use the appositive phrase “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” to form a new sentence after it, that new sentence would often become a stumbling block to developing the basic statement. Indeed, with a powerful statement like “She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” getting in the way, it won’t be an easy task to go back to the thread of our basic statement and develop it. In contrast, folding that powerful statement into an appositive phrase in the first sentence neatly sidesteps the potential continuity problem while making that first sentence much more readable and interesting.

The appositive phrase we have discussed above is of the nonrestrictive type, which means that it isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence even if it adds important additional information to it. Nonrestrictive appositive phrases are parentheticals that, like nonrestrictive relative clauses, need a pair of enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence.

But some appositive phrases are of the restrictive type and they don’t need those commas. We will take them up next in Part IV. 

NOTE: In Part III above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.

Part IV - Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or afterthought

We already know that a parenthesis or parenthetical is basically added information whose distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. So far, however, we have taken up only its first two types, the nonrestrictive relative clause and the nonrestrictive appositive phrase, both of which require enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence. We have also taken up the restrictive relative clause and the restrictive appositive phrase, but we have seen that they aren’t really true parentheticals because they are not expendable—we don’t really have the option to drop them from the sentence.

This time we’ll take up the two other kinds of parentheticals: the parenthesis by dashes, and the parenthesis by parentheses. They differ from the parenthesis by comma in that neither of them can be punctuated properly by a pair of enclosing commas. In their case, though, the use of dashes or parentheses is generally interchangeable and is often a matter of stylistic choice. This choice largely depends on whether the parenthetical is really optional or contextually necessary, perhaps simply an aside; in any case, however, using enclosing commas to set it off is out of the question.

Parenthesis by dashes. This kind of parenthetical normally folds another sentence into a sentence, as in this example: “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.” What sets off the parenthetical “they said they didn’t know it then” from the main sentence is a pair of double dashes, which indicates a much stronger break in the thought or structure of the sentence than what a pair of enclosing commas can provide.

See what happens when we use commas instead to punctuate that kind of parenthetical: “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.” The pauses provided by the two commas are much too brief to indicate the sudden shift from the major developing thought to the subordinate idea; structurally, they also truncate the sentence. 

If the writer so chooses, however, parentheses may also be used for that same parenthetical: “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.” When parentheses are used, however, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he or she would when using double dashes instead.

Parenthesis by parentheses. This is the preferred punctuation when the writer wants to convey to the reader that the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to his exposition, as in this example: “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.” However, if the writer intends to take up the dealer’s apparently false assurance in some detail later in the exposition, the parenthesis by dashes would be a good foreshadowing device: “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.”

Parentheticals enclosed by parentheses need not be complete sentences, of course. They can be simple qualifying phrases within or at the tail end of sentences: “Many elective officials (of the dynastic kind, particularly) sometimes forget that they don’t own those positions.” “The disgruntled cashier took the day off (without even filing a leave).”

Even more commonly, parentheses areof used to add a fact—maybe a name or number—that’s subordinate or tangential to the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “Recent geologic research (Alvarez, Alvarez et al, 1980) indicates that the dinosaurs went extinct when an asteroid some 10 km in diameter smashed on present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.” 

NOTE: In the essay above, the italicization of the parenthetical in the sentence given as example is done for emphasis only. Parentheticals are normally written or printed in the same Roman typeface as the rest of the sentence.

This intensive four-part discusssion of the parenthesis in English exposition first appeared as a series in my "English Plain and Simple" columns in The Manila Times in December 2009, copyright by the Manila Times Pubishing Corp. All rights reserved. 

DEALING WITH QUOTATIONS AND ATTRIBUTIONS IN MASS MEDIA REPORTING

Basics of how written media English handles quotations and attributions

 
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When the exact words of a speaker are quoted, those words should be duly set off by quotation marks. The attribution is then provided either before or after the statement, but depending on the writer’s judgment, it may also be placed within the quoted statement whenever appropriate:

The manager said, “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”

“Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind,” the manager said.

“Our president has decided,” the manager said, “and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”

No matter where the attribution is placed in such quoted statements, the statement retains the exact words and the tense of the verbs used by the speaker. Nothing should be changed in what was actually said, as in the following example:

“Our company is in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom,” a spokesman for the refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) said on Friday.

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But the treatment would be different if the quoted material is paraphrased with attribution; that is, when the statement is reported without using the speaker’s exact words. In print journalism, in particular, this practice is indicated by doing away with the quotation marks that normally set off quoted material from its attribution.

Now, when quotation marks are dropped in this manner, there could be confusion as to which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material. This is why when using paraphrased quoted statements, many news service agencies as well as newspapers and magazines follow the so-called sequence of tenses rule.

Under the sequence of tenses rule, when the attribution comes after or within that paraphrased statement, the tenses in the quoted statement are retained:

Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) is in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom, a spokesman for the state-run Indian refiner said on Friday.

On the other hand, when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, the tense of the attribution acquires control over the tenses in the rest of the statement:

A spokesman for the state-run refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) said on Friday that the company was in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom.

Formally, the sequence of tenses rule requires that the tenses in such attributed paraphrased statements be rendered as follows:

(1) The present tense should become past tense (“is”/”are” to “was”/”were”). For instance, if a beauty contest winner tells the news reporter these exact words, “I am overwhelmed,” the reporter would write it as follows:

She said [that] she was overwhelmed.

(2) The future tense should become conditional (“will” to “would”). For instance, if an irate beauty contest loser tells the reporter these exact words, “I will appeal the judges’ decision,” the reporter would write it as follows:

She said [that] she would appeal the judges’ decision.

(3) The past tense should become past perfect (“was”/”were” to “had been”), except when the time element is indicated. For instance, if a beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “We were scandalized by the loser’s complaint,” the reporter would write it as follows:

She said [that] they had been scandalized by the loser’s complaint.

However, the past tense is retained when the time element of the action in the quoted material is given:

She said [that] they were scandalized when the loser filed a complaint yesterday.

(4) The future perfect becomes conditional (“will have + past participle” to “would have + past participle”). For instance, if the beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “I will have to review the scores first before deciding,” the reporter would write it as follows:

She said she would have to evaluate the scores first before deciding.

The sequence of tenses rule is easy to apply when the attribution comes after or within the paraphrased quoted statement. For instance, if a political analyst tells a newspaper reporter these exact words, “Some senators are vehemently against changing the Constitution and I think they’ll fight tooth and nail to defeat the proposed amendments,” the reporter might make a quoted paraphrase in either of two ways:

Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way, the political analyst said.

or:

Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change, the political analyst said, and they will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way.

The tenses in the speaker’s exact words are retained.

As previously pointed out, however, some news service agencies, newspapers, and magazines find the sequence of tenses rule for paraphrased quoted statements rule confusing and misleading. They prefer to use the so-called exceptional sequence rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material. The example given earlier will thus be rendered in this paraphrased quoted form:

The political analyst said [that] several senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight it in every possible way.

Proponents of the exceptional sequence rule argue that paraphrased quoted statements formed by using it are clearer and more logical and immediate than those formed by using the traditional sequence of tenses rule. True enough, by not having to change the tenses in paraphrased quoted statements, the exceptional sequence rule eliminates a procedure that can sometimes confuse even the writers themselves and possibly mislead the reader.

                      IMAGE CREDIT: GRAMMAR-MONSTER.COM

Some infamous quoted statements in world history that survived 

those who uttered them

We can better appreciate the relative virtues of the two rules by applying each to a statement about a situation that doesn’t change so quickly. Assume, for instance, that a provincial governor told a reporter these exact words yesterday: “I have a green card but I don’t intend to live in the U.S. upon my retirement.”

A quoted paraphrase of this verbatim statement using the traditional sequence of tenses rule will change its tense from present to past:

The provincial governor said [that] he had a green card but didn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.

In contrast, a quoted paraphrase using the exceptional sequence rule will retain the present tense:

The provincial governor said [that] he has a green card but doesn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.

Both versions are grammatically correct, and present no logical problems with their differing use of the tenses.

Even under the exceptional sequence rule, though, some situations arise in which changing the tense of the verbatim quoted material becomes absolutely necessary. For instance, assume that a city mayor told a reporter of a daily newspaper these exact words yesterday: “I am not feeling well so I will not attend the party caucus tonight.”

In a news report for today’s papers, the following paraphrased quoted statement using the exceptional sequence rule will no longer hold logically:

The city mayor said [that] he is not feeling well and will not attend the party caucus last night.

This is because by the time the report is read, the city mayor might have already gotten well and might have even attended the party caucus eventually. Thus, there’s no choice but to use the past tense, as in the case of the sequence of tenses rule:

The city mayor said [that] he was not feeling well and would not attend the party caucus scheduled last night.

Indeed, no matter what rule we use in writing paraphrased quoted statements, the paraphrasing must reflect in a logical way the effect of the passage of time between the utterance of the quoted statement and its being read in printed form.

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This article appeared in my column "English Plain and Simple" in The Manila Times on July 25, 2009. It had liberally used some instruction material from the Idaho Pressbooks Consortium where Idaho’s academic community publishes and openly licenses its work for use by others. Visitors of this and affiliated sites can thus gain access to various educational resources—all published under open licenses to encourage educational use. Check out the idaho.pressbooks.pub website for details about Write What Matters, a book to help steer you in the right direction through all of your reading and writing. assignments.

The two styles of handling quoted material in English
(September 20, 2009)

Handling quoted material and of doing partial quotes and orphan quotes are actually very simple writing routines in English, but the unfortunate fact is that many of us still get mixed up when doing them.

The reason for the confusion is that we get exposed to both the American English and British English styles for dealing with quotations. These styles have marked differences. The American English style is to use double quotation marks to enclose quotations, and single quotation marks to set off a quotation within a quotation. In contrast, until recent times, the British English style did the reverse: it used single quotation marks to enclose direct quotations, and used double quotation marks to set off a quotation within those direct quotations.

Let’s take the quoted statement below from a recent New York Times article about the Broadway actor Geoffrey Rush. It’s a verbatim quote, but simply for illustrative purposes and to avoid unsightly complications, I didn’t enclose the entire passage within the opening and closing quotation marks required for such a quote. Look:

The geopolitical particulars did not interest Mr. Rush, though.

“I kept thinking, ‘What will the world be like when all life ends?’” he said recently, recalling that day in 1962. “What is ‘nothingness’?”

That is the American English style for handling quoted statements and punctuating the elements within quoted statements. Notice that in the attributed direct quote, the opening quotes and closing quotes are double quotation marks, while the opening quotes and closing quotes setting off the quoted statements within the quotation—and the orphan quote for “nothingness” as well—are single quotation marks.

On the other hand, the British style of yesteryears (and this applied to many of the English literary classics) would render such quoted statements in the following manner:

The geopolitical particulars did not interest Mr. Rush, though.

‘I kept thinking, “What will the world be like when all life ends?”’ he said recently, recalling that day in 1962. ‘What is “nothingness?”’

Observe that in place of the double quotes for the opening and closing quotes for the direct quotations, this particular British-style uses single quotation marks instead, and that in place of the single quotes for the opening and closing quotes setting off the quoted statements within the direct quotations (as well as those setting off the orphan quotes), this style uses double quotation marks instead.

In recent years, though, many publications in the United Kingdom shifted to the American English style for using quotations marks—but retaining a major punctuation difference. Still the norm in British publications is to put the punctuation of a statement inside the closing quotation marks if that punctuation belongs to the quoted statement; otherwise, that punctuation is placed outside the closing quotation marks.

Take this example from an article in a recent issue of The Sunday Times of London:

Richard, he boasts to friends, is “offensively well and full of violence”, rolls about in the hay “stark naked”, takes his turn at chopping wood and filling the oil lamps, and “even insists on pouring out my ration of gin for me every evening”.

Note that in the first and second partial quotes, the comma is placed after the closing quotation marks; and that in the third partial quote, the period (or what the British call the full stop) after the entire passage is placed outside the closing quotation marks.

In the American English style, of course, all of those punctuations will be inside those closing quotation marks:

Richard, he boasts to friends, is “offensively well and full of violence,” rolls about in the hay “stark naked,” takes his turn at chopping wood and filling the oil lamps, and “even insists on pouring out my ration of gin for me every evening.”