Blessed by the ILL Gods and Other Stories

[alixtii]

The book I ordered, Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture by Will "I'm Not Allowed to Say I Think Hayden Panettiere Is Hot" Brooker, has arrived. I'll tell you what I think of it when I've finished. That means, so far, I've gotten books by this guy, henryjenkins, and rozk, but I'm still waiting for kbusse_blog's book to show up. Woes.

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I posted fic Tuesday night, Emma and Kitty acting out one of the femslashier (and cross-gen-y) scenes from "The Snow Queen," in a way which actually fits into AXM canon. I thought my flist would eat it up. (Apparently not?)

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Courtesy of slammerkinbabe: The Roberts Court continues to prove itself activist. (N.B.: My intent is to make fun of the "activist" meme, not to endorse it. There are times when when the Court should be activist [I have a very expansive view of Constitutional rights] and times when it shouldn't. The best government isn't the government which governs least, but the one which governs best. In other words, I'm unashamedly partisan.) Actually, looking at the front page of the New York Times, "activist" doesn't really begin to cover it. God they were busy. (And conservative. Oh, so very conservative. Much more than I actually expected, really. I guess stare decisis is a thing of the past.)

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Earlier today, I was confused whether it should be "Do you want Mom and me to go to the store?" or "Do you want Mom and I to go to the store?" On reflection, taking out "Mom and" makes it pretty clear that the "correct" pronoun is "me" (as one would never say "Do you want I to go to the store?") but I'm still not sure why that is the case, or what all of the pieces in that sentence are doing. Sentences that I can't diagram vex me.

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The rector at my parish, who will be retiring shortly (woes!), gave me two books by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in order to clear out his own collection. I've only browsed through them, but in general I have to say I find theological works from that era absolutely fascinating, since besides a few pages of Tillich that I read and fell in love with in high school (yes, my Catholic high school had Tillich in its library) I've pretty much only read theology that was written since 1970 (mostly feminist, postmodernist, and/or liberationist theology) or else stuff like Aquinas and Augustine. The specific set of problems that a 1960's theology needed to address is similar in many ways to those of today, but alongside Beyond God the Father, Ecology & Liberation, and The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida it sort of ends up looking rather quaint, if you know what I mean. (OTOH, some parts I read and I totally go "OMG, I can't believe he just said that.")

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I don't know. In the googling I've done since, there are a lot of linguistics papers talking about infinitival clauses having subjects.

And certainly "me" doesn't fall easily into any of the "high school grammar textbook" types of objects. The verbal "to go" itself (or, more probably, the verbal clause) seems to be much closer to being a direct object (I'm not being desired directly), and "me" is left in a very strange position. It's an object in the sense that's in an object case, of course, but I still don't have a satisfactory understanding of why.

As far as I can tell, "want" is being used as an Exceptional Case Marking verb, whatever that means.

The supposed language change seems to be the consequence of rampant hypercorrection.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I am completely ignorant of generative syntax so I can't begin to comment on exceptional case marking verbs :-)

It's an object in the sense that's in an object case, of course, but I still don't have a satisfactory understanding of why.

I'm still not sure why it's a problem - I mean, you're right, the "object" is the verbal clause rather than just the pronoun,
which would make the difference between


He asked me [to help him]

He invited me [to drop by]

He wanted [me to come]

He expected [me to refuse]


but an oblique case of some kind would seem to be demanded (unless you're speaking a a kind of LOLenglish - "You wants I should come?")

German would separate all these verb phrases off via a conjunction (ob in the first two instances and dass in the second two).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much ignorant of most grammar/linguistics beyond high school grammar textbook prescriptivism, except to recognize just how woefully inadequate that set of rules is to describing the lanbguage that we speak and read. Sometimes the massive amount of information about the language which I speak that I don't understand just scares me. And I know more grammar than pretty much anyone I know offline.