Grammar FAIL

(Written 9-24-09)

It's almost time for midterms, and that means I have been bombarded with nit-picky grammar questions all week. It's lots of fun...not.

I feel like a fraud as the resident English "expert" at these times, because for most of the questions I can't explain my reasoning, I just know what is right or wrong or what sounds awkward in English.

One teacher sent me the following message. I think I have a pretty good handle on English grammar until I read something like this:

The pair of sentences illustrates two different patterns which a group of English verbs allows. This pattern is often referred to as "dative shift" because it involves an alternation in the marking of the recipient or indirect object argument.

(1) a. John gave a beautiful ring to his daughter.

b. John gave his daughter a beautiful ring.

It is generally assumed that (1b), called the 'double object construction', This is why we call the alternation between (1a) and (1b) 'dative shift', However, it is not the case that all VPs with the form of [Verb + NP + to +NP ] can undergo the dative shit and give rise to the corresponding double object construction, [Verb + NP + NP]

Uhhh...what???

At the bottom of the message, there were 10 sentences and I was supposed to choose which ones had undergone the "dative shift." Now, it looks pretty obvious in the above example, but the sentences all seemed to be the same in construction. I wrote the teacher back saying so, and that I had never even heard of a "dative shift," and I was sorry I couldn't be of more help.

This happens all too often. Mostly, the Korean English teachers know more about English grammar than I do.