Month: October 2008

The diversity of “get”

Devolution toward Simpler, Outsider's Perspective, Verbs

The verb “get” is amazingly diverse in its definitions.

“You can get a ticket.” means “You can receive a ticket.”

“You get to go.” means “You are allowed to go.”

“You get up at 8 o’clock?” means “You wake up at 8 o’clock?”

“Do you get it?” means “Do you understand it?”

“Get out of my way!” means “Move out of my way!”

“Could you get that for me?” means “Could you procure and bring that for me?”

“When do you get your hair cut?” means “When do you cause your hair to become cut?”

“Get her before she reaches the prison fence!” means “Seize her before she reaches the prison fence!”

“When do you get home?” means “When do you arrive home?”

And these are only some of the definitions of the verb “get”!

I believe that this diversity is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say or write “get” than to say or write the verbs that it replaces.

From an outsider’s perspective, though, the diversity of “get” must be challenging to master.

“Give the money to us!” vs. “Give us the money!”

Prepositions, Pronouns, Versus

I have been contemplating these two imperative constructions for the past several days.

Question:
Are both constructions correct?

Explanation:
The verb “Give” in either construction is the imperative verb.

The phrase “the money” in either construction is the direct object.

The pronoun “us” in either construction is the indirect object.

In other words, the speaker of the sentence is telling the listener to take an action (“Give”) with a direct object (“the money”) on behalf of an indirect object (“us”).

So you might wonder why the preposition “to” is required in one construction and is NOT required in the other construction.

According to the discussion about the dative case in English at Wikipedia, the indirect object of an action does not have to be expressed with a preposition such as “to” or “for”.

In other words, the objective pronoun “us” may immediately follow the main verb and be used in a dative manner, as long as that verb has a direct object, too.

So the preposition “to” in “Give to us the money!” is optional in current English usage.

This gives [to] us the answer to the original question.

Answer:
Yes, both constructions, along with “Give to us the money!”, are correct.

“You are wright, Edward.”

Adjectives, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this in a comment on someone’s blog.

Problem:
The commenter used a noun where an adjective was required.

Explanation:
The comment appeared below a blog post about three places to shop for Google Android applications.

The commenter wrote “You are wright, Edward.” and was indicating agreement with what another commenter — named Edward — had written.

The word “wright” — spelled W-R-I-G-H-T — is a noun that means someone who repairs or constructs something. For example, a “playwright” is someone who constructs theatrical plays.

The commenter should have used the adjective “right” — spelled R-I-G-H-T — which has many definitions, one of which is correct in opinion.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “you are right” — using R-I-G-H-T — 6,500,000 matches
  • “you are wright” — using W-R-I-G-H-T — 4,320 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 1,505-to-1, which is superb.

Solution:
“You are right, Edward.”