Question:
I'm taking an English Syntax (grammar) course & I've recently hit upon
a tricky (to me) homework question. As I don't have anyone handy to
ask -- it's a correspondence course -- I thought I see if anyone here
could help.
The question asks me to extrapolate from the following supplied
sentences:
I gave it to John. (Grammatically a-okay)
I gave John it. (Allegedly grammatically internet)
I'm told that the reason "I gave John it" isn't grammatical is that
"when the iO (Indirect Object) precedes the dO (Direct Object), the
second noun phrase ("it" in the second sentence) cannot consist of
it." (text in parentheses was added by me)
The problem for me is that "I gave John it" seems perfectly okay to
me. What fundamental rule of English grammar am I missing? I find it
quite distressing that I can't find fault with a sentence even when
I'm told its faulty!
Note: I've not mentioned how I'm to extrapolate from the above as I
don't want any help producing an answer; I only want to understand &
learn from the question.
Also, in the interest of honesty, I think I'll include a copy of this
posting and any useful reply(ies) it garners -- if it garners any --
with the corresponding homework assignment. I hope no one will mind.
Answer:
don't think "grammatical" is quite the right word for what is at issue
(subject to further comment below). There is no particular syntactical
reason why you can say "I gave John the ball" and not "I gave John it."
Perfectly ordinary substitution of pronoun for noun, right?
The problem, rather, is that most native speakers of English simply
don't say "I gave John it." And similarly for other pronouns as direct
objects following indirect objects. (I think there's an exception of
some strange sort for "give me it" when spoken, because it comes out
"gimme it," and "gimme" is felt syntactically as one word. So there's
really no indirect object there.)
If we were starting from scratch and making rules, I'd be happy to write
a rule that allowed such a sentence. Ultimately, however, the issue is
not whether we can justify a particular usage syntactically but whether
that usage is one that English speakers do and will in fact use.
There's no logical reason why we say "I'm able to learn" and I'm capable
of learning" instead of "Im able of learning" and "I'm capable to
learn." It's just that we say the first two and not the last two.
There's a name for what's going on here -- idiom. Idiom is the arbiter
of what sounds natural and correct in spoken language (and what looks
natural and correct in written language). English has simply not
adopted "I gave John it" as idiomatic. It sounds *almost* right, and it
may yet sneak under the idiom barrier, but as of the end of 1999 it
still fails the test.
That said, it is also true that some linguists and other commentators on
language do sometimes adopt a broad definition of grammar that includes
such things as idiom as well as syntax. If that's the definition of
grammar used in your class, then this is an issue of grammar, but only
because, to repeat, grammar in that definition includes idiom
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