Versus

“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.

“Dwarves” vs. “Rooves”

Nouns, Plurals, Versus

I thought of these two words after learning recently that the singular form of one of them relates to Fannie Mae.

Problem:
One of these is not a proper word.

Explanation:
Fannie Mae — the U.S. Federal National Mortgage Association — has been in the news a lot recently, given the recent failures in the U.S. mortgage and banking industries.

I learned the other day that a “dwarf” in Fannie Mae lingo is the name given to a pool of mortgage-backed, Fannie Mae-issued securities with a maturity of 15 years.

As I wrote earlier this year, the plural form of the singular noun “roof” is “roofs” and never “rooves”.

In contrast, the plural form of the singular noun “dwarf” is either “dwarfs” — spelled D-W-A-R-F-S — or “dwarves” — spelled D-W-A-R-V-E-S.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
“Dwarves” is a proper word (a plural form of the singular noun “dwarf”). “Rooves”, in contrast, is not a proper word.

“He hit the ball hardly.” vs. “He hardly hit the ball.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Versus

I thought of the adjective “soft” and its adverbial form “softly” and was not sure whether the adverbial form of the adjective “hard” was “hardly”.

Problem:
The most popular meanings of the adverb “hardly” are not the opposite of the adverb “softly”.

Explanation:
If you ask most Americans what the adverbial form of the adjective “soft” is, they very likely will respond that it is the adverb “softly”.

However, if you ask most Americans what the adverbial form of the adjective “hard” is, they probably will not respond that it is the adverb “hardly”.

From most to least popular, here are four definitions of the adverb “hardly”:

  1. barely — as in “He hardly graduated from high school.”;
  2. scarcely — as in “The news is hardly surprising.”;
  3. with small likelihood — as in “She will hardly attend the wedding.”;
  4. forcefully — as in “He threw the baseball hardly.”

So the fourth definition of the adverb “hardly” does go with the adjective “hard” in the same way that the most common definition of adverb “softly” goes with the adjective “soft” .

It is worth noting that — at least in American English — the first three definitions typically go with putting the adverb “hardly” adjacent to the verb, whereas the fourth definition typically goes with putting the adverb “hardly” adjacent to the object upon which the action is performed forcefully.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
Use “He hit the ball hardly.” as a substitute for “He hit the ball forcefully.” Use “He hardly hit the ball.” as a substitute for “He barely hit the ball.”