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This Students’ Sounding Board is a section created especially for college and high school students. On request, it will provide informal advice and entertain discussions on specific questions, concerns, doubts, and problems about English grammar and usage as taught or taken up in class. If a particular rule or aspect of English confuses you or remains fuzzy to you, the Students’ Sounding Board can help clarify it. Please keep in mind, though, that this section isn’t meant to be an editing facility, research resource, or clearing house for student essays, class reports, term papers, or dissertations. Submissions shouldn’t be longer than 100-150 words.

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How gerund phrases and infinitive phrases work with verbs

Question by forces20, Forum member (February 18, 2013):

Why can’t we write the sentence “I’m committed to providing whatever it takes to meet a students’ need” as “I’m committed to provide whatever it takes to meet a students’ need” instead?

I ask the same question for these two other alternative sentence constructions: “I look forward to (seeing, see) you for public school next year” and “‘The CHED appears to have conducted the GTS last year, and I look forward to (examining, examine) the results,’ he said.”

Also, do the words “providing,” “seeing,” and “finishing” in those sentences act as a verb or as a verbal?

My reply to forces20:

The first two sentences you presented are both grammatically and semantically correct, so you can write them any which way you prefer.

The first sentence, “I’m committed to providing whatever it takes to meet a students’ need,” uses the gerund phrase “providing whatever it takes to meet a students’ need”—which, of course, is a noun form—as the object of the preposition “to.” This means that through the preposition, the gerund phrase receives the action of the verb “committed.”

On the other hand, the second sentence, “I’m committed to provide whatever it takes to meet a students’ need,” uses the infinitive phrase “to provide whatever it takes to meet a students’ need”—also a noun form—as a verb complement of “committed.” This complement functions both as a modifier of the verb “committed” as well as its direct object, meaning that it directly receives the action of that verb. This alternative sentence construction is, like the first, grammatically beyond reproach.

However, by some quirk of the English language (an aspect so abstruse that I won’t attempt to explain it here), not all verbs will accept an infinitive phrase as their verb complement. This is the case with the verb “see” in this awkward form of the second sentence you provided: “I look forward to see you for public school next year.” The construction may appear to be grammatically correct but it just doesn’t sound right. It would be grammatically correct and idiomatic, though, if we use the gerund phrase “seeing you for public school next year” as the object of the preposition “to”: “I look forward to seeing you for public school next year.”

Using the same grammatical mechanism, this sentence you presented, “‘The CHED appears to have conducted the GTS last year, and I look forward to examining the results,’ he said,” is grammatically perfect and sounds right as well. Here, the gerund phrase “examining the results” is the object of the preposition “to.” In contrast, the construction “‘The CHED appears to have conducted the GTS last year, and I look forward to examine the results,’ he said” is grammatically flawed and sounds awkward. Here, the infinitive phrase “to examine the results” is a dysfunctional verb complement of the verb “look”—a construction that on the face of it just doesn’t work right.

In the sentence constructions above, the words “providing,” “seeing,” and “examining” function not as verbs but as gerunds—verbals ending in “-ing” that, as we know, function as a noun form; the “to” that precedes them doesn’t make them infinitives but instead works as a preposition linking them to the object in the sentence. In the alternative sentence constructions, on the other hand, the words “to provide,” “to see,” and “to examine” function as infinitives—verbals that consist of the base verb preceded by “to” and that likewise function as a noun form. The difference is that the gerund phrase that follows each of these infinitives works not as an object of the verb but as a verb complement modifying it.

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“Advanced” or “advance” Merry Christmas?

Question by forces20, Forum member (December 24, 2012):

I would like to ask, sir, which of these two is more appropriate to use: “Advanced Merry Christmas!” or “Advance Merry Christmas!”?

My reply to forces20 (December 24, 2012):

As greetings, I think both “Advanced Merry Christmas” and “Advance Merry Christmas” are grammatically incorrect as well as semantically incorrect. Christmas is reckoned not as a single day but as a holiday season that lasts so many days, so when we say “Merry Christmas!”, it’s understood that our greeting applies to the whole season and not just to a single day nor just to Christmas Day on December 25 alone. To append either “advanced” or “advance” to “Merry Christmas!” is therefore unnecessary if not entirely nonsensical.

We must keep in mind that a Christmas greeting isn't the same as, say, a birthday greeting. Someone’s birthday falls on just a single day, so if the greeting is being made a few days ahead of that particular birthday, it makes sense to greet that someone “Happy Birthday in advance!” If the greeting is being made after that birthday, it also makes sense to say “My belated warm wishes on your birthday last (date).” But it would be terribly unidiomatic if not totally out of line to greet someone “Advance Merry Christmas!” or “Advanced Merry Christmas!” before the Christmas season and “Belated Merry Christmas!” after the end of the Christmas season.

So today in particular, December 24, don’t make the mistake of greeting someone “Advanced Merry Christmas” and “Advance Merry Christmas” simply because Christmas Day is still a good 4-1/2 hours away. Whether you say it in advance or on the day itself, just say “Merry Christmas!” and you couldn’t go wrong with it.

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When to precede or not to precede nouns with the article “an”

Question from youssef, Forum member (September 17, 2012):

I need advice if I need to remove “an” in the sentence below.

“An affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people.”

Thanks.

My reply to youssef:

I would like to apologize for this very belated reply. Due to an oversight, I missed out your question altogether and it was only a while ago that I was able to read it.

Yes, you need to remove the indefinite article “an” altogether from that statement you presented. It’s because “an” is an indefinite article that’s used to precede a singular noun whose spelling begins with the vowel “a,” “e,” “i,” “o,” or “u,” as in “an apparent mistake,” “an elegant gown,” “an iconic personality,” “an overland trip,” and “an umbrella.” When the singular noun begins with a consonant like “b,” “c,” “d,” and “z,” the indefinite article is used instead to precede that noun, as in “a ball,” “a caravan,” “a doll,” and “a zebra.” (In the case of definite nouns but not proper nouns, of course, the definite article is used to precede them, as in “the wall,” “the ocean,” and “the apartment.”)

By the way, I used the word “statement” for what you presented above because it really doesn’t qualify as a sentence in the absence of an operative verb. An even more accurate description of that nonsentence is a “fragment”; this is because unlike a sentence, it doesn’t convey a complete thought. Now, when we drop the grammatically faulty article “an” from that fragment, it becomes what’s called an extended noun phrase: “affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people.” We can then use it as a subject in sentences like “Affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people are hard to find in the height of summer” or as a direct object in sentences like “We found affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people” (the whole noun phrase “affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people” is the direct object, or receiver of the action, of the verb “found”). 

Of course, the noun phrase “affordable transient rooms in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people”—without the “an” preceding it—can also be used as a stand-alone tag in, say, a classified ad like the following:

Affordable transient rooms in
Baguio that can accommodate 
almost 8 people. Along Kennon
Road. See to appreciate. Call
Tel. 444-9XXXX.

When only one transient room is involved, meaning that the noun is singular, that's the time “an” will be needed to precede the noun, as in “an affordable transient room in Baguio that can accommodate almost 8 people.”

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