{"id":409,"date":"2007-11-13T01:41:39","date_gmt":"2007-11-13T08:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blog\/?p=409"},"modified":"2008-02-11T01:59:23","modified_gmt":"2008-02-11T08:59:23","slug":"grammar-needs-abandoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2007\/11\/13\/grammar-needs-abandoned\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammar Needs Abandoned?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Columnist Jan Freeman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/ideas\/articles\/2007\/11\/11\/lawn_needs_cut\/\">defends<\/a> the habit, common in some regions, of using the past participle in place of the gerund or infinitive phrase &#8211; ie saying &#8220;t&#8217;lawn needs cut&#8221; rather than  &#8220;the lawn needs to be cut&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The main issue here is that the past participle is an adjective and the problem with using an adjective as a noun is that we seem to have a built in syntax checker that works independent of semantics. So if in &#8220;I work fed&#8221; the adjective applies to the subject, then it should also do so in &#8220;I need fed&#8221;, which therefore means that <em>after<\/em> being fed I apparently still need something else!<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; of course the fact that in English the gerund (noun) has the same form as the present participle (adjective) also needs fixing &#8211; and if Jack was hungry when he got to the top of the beanstalk he would be as leery of saying &#8220;I need eating&#8221; as of &#8220;I need eaten&#8221;. I do <em>like<\/em> eating though&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>But it should be clear by now that I don&#8217;t need confused since I already am!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Columnist Jan Freeman defends the habit, common in some regions, of using the past participle in place of the gerund or infinitive phrase &#8211; ie saying &#8220;t&#8217;lawn needs cut&#8221; rather than &#8220;the lawn needs to be cut&#8221;. The main issue &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2007\/11\/13\/grammar-needs-abandoned\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}