I find climbing that mountain difficult.

[5jj]

Re-reading the whole thread, I don't think we disagree on much.

I think the fundamental difference is that I attach imprtance to whether an utterance is good, or natural, or appropriate language. You attach more importance to grammaticality and logic.

 

[jutfrank]

Re-reading the whole thread, I don't think we disagree on much.

No, I don't think we do.

I think the fundamental difference is that I attach imprtance to whether an utterance is good, or natural, or appropriate language. You attach more importance to grammaticality and logic.

Just to be clear, when you say "more importance", more than you do, yes, I think that's fair to say. It's not that I attach more importance to grammaticality and logic than I do to good, natural, appropriate language. I hope that's not what you meant!

I really think that a major problem related to all this is what stems from a member's original question. As we all know all too well, learners often ask the wrong question. They'll ask things like "Is this sentence grammatically correct?" or much worse— "Is this sentence correct?" when really they just need us to tell them whether what they've written expresses well (whether that means clearly, grammatically, sensibly, elegantly, concisely, etc.) what they mean to say and, of course, whether it's appropriate to whatever situation it's going to be used in. That's why we demand to have context, right? So we can see the intended meaning and use of the utterance. The temptation to answer these questions with a mere "Yes, it's grammatical" can be quite strong on busy days. Sometimes, such an answer is the right one, but often, it's unhelpful because any technically 'correct' answer is completely besides the point.

If it sounds like I'm blaming the learners, it's because I am! No, seriously, as I think teechar was pointing out the other day, a big part of our job is to help learners ask the right questions in the first place. I can't overemphasise how important I think this part of our jobs is. That's what I tried to get at, unsuccessfully it seems, way back in post #5.

 

[5jj]

It's not that I attach more importance to grammaticality and logic than I do to good, natural, appropriate language. I hope that's not what you meant!

That's the impression I get when you say such things as "A sentence's status of being grammatical is irrelevant to whether it counts as good, or natural, or appropriate language".

 

[jutfrank]

That's the impression I get when you say such things as "A sentence's status of being grammatical is irrelevant to whether it counts as good, or natural, or appropriate language".

I don't see that but okay, fair enough. That's not at all the impression I meant to give. I'll be more careful in the future.

 

[Phlebas the Phoenician]

Not at all. It is simply that, in this case, my opinion is different from yours and jutfrank's, as is, it seems, teeachar's.

Thanks, 5jj. I needed this reassurance. Things tend to get tense for me when a fellow native speaker who takes grammar seriously disagrees with me about whether a construction is grammatical or natural. Thankfully, as I now realize, such disagreement needn't be interpreted as boiling down to the judgement "You can't speak your native language properly."

I really like the discussion that you and Jutfrank have been having about grammaticality in relation to the topics of naturalness and of whether a sentence is good or bad. I should confess that I had to do a little grammatical soul-searching, as it were, before proposing and standing up for the construction in question, where "find" is complemented by a negated infinitival clause in which "be" is followed by a locative adverbial phrase.

As Teecher points out, this is not quite the same as the "I find him not to be rude" type of case, which even I find MUCH easier to approve of than "I find the book not to be on the table." Nevertheless, I would be comfortable with using the latter sentence in an unusual context, one in which I wished to express my judgement that the purported location of an object was inaccurate. Indeed, as I am thinking about this, "find" could in this case be replaced with "deem" or "judge."

I deem the book not to be on the table.
I judge the book not to be on the table.
I find the book not to be on the table.

Note that "deem" and "judge" are not generally used to express one's subjective impression, whereas "find" is generally so used. Perhaps this is another source of our disagreement. In any case, I shan't press my case for this usage of "find" any farther. The fact is that I sometimes use unusual constructions. For instance, I've never once heard anyone use "shan't" in conversation in the United States, but I just used it here!

 

[jutfrank]

I agree that I find the book not to be on the table is less 'something' than I find him not to be rude, but I don't consider that 'something' to be anything to do with grammar. As someone who has an academic interest/background in logic and semantics, I'm always thinking about meaning and how it applies to use, and I'm not usually particularly interested in grammar, which for me is just about syntactical and morphological rules.

1) I find him to be rude.

We're talking here about a subjective judgement/impression/opinion, whatever you want to call it. We all agree this is a common use of this particular structure.

2) I find the book to be on the table.

To me, this is obviously quite different, and I don't think it's about 'judgement of the accuracy of a purported location' as you say, Phlebas. So does that count for me as a different meaning? A different use? I think so. And I don't think it's really about locative adverbials in an essential way.

There was a thread earlier today with a sentence something like:

3) He came home to find his wife dead.

This is obviously not similar in use to sentence 1. Can we say that sentences 2 and 3 are both about 'discovery of a state-of-affairs', whereas sentence 1 is about 'personal impression'? I think we can, despite the predicates 'rude' and 'dead' both being adjective phrases. Isn't it therefore about meaning rather than structure? If the structure is the same, where does the difference lie? In the sense of 'find'? Can we use the copula 'to be' in sentence 3? Why (not)?

Also, I presume the negation doesn't make a difference:

3a) He came home to find his wife not dead.

Do you have the same problem with the negator position of 3a, teechar/5jj? Surely it's not the same thing to say 'He came home not to find his wife dead', is it? It may sound a bit of a strange thing to say, but I think 3a is fine. I mean, I think it's grammatical, logical and it could be an example of good, natural and appropriate English in the right context.

 

[Phlebas the Phoenician]

2) I find the book to be on the table.

To me, this is obviously quite different, and I don't think it's about 'judgement of the accuracy of a purported location' as you say, Phlebas. So does that count for me as a different meaning? A different use? I think so. And I don't think it's really about locative adverbials in an essential way.

The "judgement" meaning is the one that comes to mind for me when I think about how I and others use the construction. I didn't mean to suggest that that particular type of meaning is involved whenever "to be" is added to the construction.

I thought a little more about the construction today and realized that one context in which I might naturally use it, whether or not I ever actually have used it in this context, is when warning my students about the importance of not plagiarizing and of citing sources carefully in research papers. I might say:

Cite your sources carefully. If I find quoted text not to be in the article or book that you say it is in, you may receive a lower grade on the assignment.
Cite your sources carefully. If quoted text is found not to be in the article or book that you say it is in, you may receive a lower grade on the assignment.

In the second example above, the construction in question is in the passive voice rather than the active. Perhaps it is more common in the passive. Here are a couple of quotes that I just found online. For what it's worth, they resonate with "judgement" meaning.

"When this test is performed by a person other than the master and the equipment is found not to be in proper operating condition, the master shall be properly notified thereof." (source)

". . . the court dismissed the defendant's appeal, saying that it had been open to the judge to prefer the evidence of the claimant's expert as to the probable reason why the clip was found not to be on the Fallopian tube." (source)

3) He came home to find his wife dead.

. . . Can we use the copula 'to be' in sentence 3? Why (not)?

I don't think we can. This sounds wrong to me: "He came home to find his wife to be dead." I have no idea why it's wrong, assuming it is. I'm glad you brought this up!