Re: The first thing he having done being...

On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 23:04:58 -0700 (PDT),
"benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx" <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1990d3ed-7555-428a-89b7-2b20dc42e56e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Oct 10, 5:51 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 21:09:58 -0700 (PDT),
"benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:fc031b2b-fc85-4244-850f-d72e715f99fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:
On Oct 10, 4:04 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 9, 5:53 pm, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 10, 10:15 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 9, 4:57 pm, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 10, 4:27 am, António Marques <m...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
'One, of course, is the great Private Park, and, of
course, the greatest thing about it is that it's no
longer private: the first thing which the
King-Emperor having done, upon succeeding the
reclusive Mazzimilian the Mad on the throne, being
to throw open the Private Park to the pulic.' --
Avram Davidson, _Polly Charms, the Sleeping Woman_

[...]

I thought it would be obvious that I was referring to the main verb of
the remainder of the sentence, a rather unwieldy structure which the
writer has attempted to attach to the above by means of a participial
(absolute) construction.
A simple example from Trask to illustrate this kind of thing:
[The day being cloudy,] we decided to stay home.

Exactly.

The bracketed stuff is the participial-absolute.
Understood "was" (main verb of the participial structure)
is replaced by "being", indicating that this is the
explanation or reason for the main clause. Now if you
have subordinate clauses within your participial
structure, at least in my English, you do _not_ want to
participialize the verbs in them. So

[The day we had planned to go for a walk being cloudy], we
decided to stay home.

Replacing any of those by "having", "planning", "going",
or any combination thereof, just makes a mess. And that's
what Davidson has done.

But that's not the same construction.

? What's the difference you see?

 Here's one that
actually is analogous and lacks the extra bits:

   We did not get wet, the first thing our mother having
   done upon leaving the house being to put up the
   umbrella.

This is postposed rather than preposed, but I don't see why that
should make a difference. It's otherwise parallel to my example in
that the main verb is BE, and the subject contains a relative clause
whose verb you want to participialize and I don't.

How do you convert it to something analogous to this?

[The day we had planned to go for a walk being cloudy], we
decided to stay home.

Do you mean this?

We did not get wet, the first thing our mother did upon
leaving the house having been to put up the umbrella.

Hm, maybe you do. I just realized that what makes it sound
a bit off to me is that the second 'did' initially suggests
a comma-spliced sentence. Let's flip it around:

The first thing our mother did upon leaving the house
having been to put up the umbrella, we did not get wet.

Okay, that works and may be the best of the lot. But I
still don't like the flipped version very much.

I don't like 'being', though I can tolerate it.  

As a reader, that is.

My version is:

   We did not get wet, the first thing our mother having
   done upon leaving the house having been to put up
   the umbrella.

But my backbrain is a bit fanatical about parallelism.

Nope, still doesn't work for me. "(having) been" is
essential in the above, and "having done" is wrong.

I don't actually *like* it, but I don't much care for

We did not get wet, the first thing our mother did upon
leaving the house having been to put up the umbrella.

either.

I guess we have to admit we're talking about different
grammars.

Probably, though I'd be interested to know whether yours
feels any difference between the two orders.

Poor António must be very confused by now.

I suspect that Davidson would be amused by it all if he were
still alive.

Brian
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The first thing he having done being...
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  • Re: The first thing he having done being...
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