to be given / to have been given

[corum]

Not to me. I think Philo has explained why.

Philo wrote:

Dynamic present simple tense-forms, unlike statives, refer to habitual, not current, events, and therefore do not generally collocate with definite time adverbials such as 'this year'.

With all dues respect, with this I can't be at one, Philo!
The plane arrives (at 18:00) tomorrow. :tick:

We use the simple present for actions set by a time table or schedule.

It is said that he (is given)/(gets) the prize at the ceremony this year. Rumour has it that the prize is scheduled to be awarded to him for this year. :tick:
He was said to be given the prize at the ceremony last year.

I remain unconvinced by Philo's eloquent but unconvincing explanation.

 

[corum]

Just a couple of points that may provide a little further clarification:

1. The difference between well-formed

[1] He was said/believed to be at the ceremony last year.

and unacceptable

[2] *He was said/believed to be given the prize at the ceremony last year.

lies in the difference of verbal type realized by 'be' in each: in [1] it is stative, the sentence as a whole corresponding to a putative (i.e. theoretically reconstructable) original statement

[1a] "It is said/believed that he is at the ceremony this year."

What does [1a] mean?

whereas in [2] it is dynamic**, corresponding to

[2a] *"It is said/believed that he is given the prize at the ceremony this year."

Regarding your acceptability judgments concerning the two sentences' *([1] and [2])* grammaticality, are you sure you did not mean the reverse?

Dynamic present simple tense-forms, unlike statives, refer to habitual, not current, events, and therefore do not generally collocate with definite time adverbials such as 'this year'.

See my previous post.

Were we to substitute an habitual time phrase, we would get an acceptable sentence, e.g.

[3] *He was said/believed to be given the prize at the ceremony every year.

The asterisk does not denote ungrammaticality, otherwise I have lost you.

( < [3a] "It is said/believed that he is given the prize at the ceremony every year.")

No, the asterisk means something else. Okay. BTW, why did you put that there?

2. If, however, working back from acceptable putative original

[4a] "It is said/believed that he is being given the prize at the ceremony this year."

we were to try to amend [2], we would get structurally dubious

[4] ?He was said/believed to be being given the prize at the ceremony last year.

, a type of sentence often termed 'infelicitous' (one theoretically generated by the rules of syntax, but, in practice, almost always avoided by natives).

Nice! Thanks for the info. :up:
For current events you accept the use of the present continuous but you are against the simple present. Warum?

N.B. ** I.e. because of the possibility of a sentence such as [4a] below, as compared with impossible

*...he is being at the ceremony this year.

I can't make anything of this.

EDIT: *([1] and [2])*

 

[corum]

There are two separate issues to be addressed here:

(1) The acceptability or otherwise of

(*)He is given the prize this year.

(construed as a 'scheduled future')

and

(2) The possibility of transposing such (if it exists) into the form of a reported past event, i.e. the acceptability or otherwise of the sentence originally at issue

(*)He was said to be given the prize last year.


Regarding (1):
In my previous comments, I noted that "dynamic present simple tense-forms...do not generally collocate with definite time adverbials such as 'this year.'"

Of course, a dynamic present simple tense-form can collocate with a definite future time adverbial, in a sentence denoting a scheduled future event, such as

[1] The train leaves at 17:03 tomorrow afternoon.

However, the acceptability of this particular type of sentence depends to a great extent on semantic/sense factors, not merely mechanical, structural ones.

Crystal clear so far.

For all their structural similarity to [1], we would not accept

*A cold north wind blows tomorrow morning.

for

A cold north wind will blow tomorrow morning.

or

*I enjoy the party tonight!

for

I'm going to enjoy the party tonight!

since there can obviously be no 'schedule' for wind blowing, any more than there can be one for people to enjoy themselves.

Fair enough. I could not agree more.

The notion of a prize being awarded according to a schedule is equally preposterous; thus

*He is given the prize this year.

would likewise not be considered an acceptable alternative to

*He will be/is going to be given the prize this year.

Because last December he was in hospital and so he could not come to the awards ceremony. Far-fetched?

(An axiom worth bearing in mind: syntactic soundness is a necessary, but not always sufficient, precondition of linguistic acceptability.)

:up:

Regarding (2):
Temporarily setting aside issue (1), even if we begin with an acceptable scheduled future sentence, such as [1] above, we cannot simply perform on it any old structural transformation that we please and assume that the resulting sentence will also be acceptable.

In

[2] *The train is said to leave at 17:03 tomorrow afternoon.

the future time phrase that would originally - by dint of a rather special 'grammatical licence' - have acceptably modified a finite present simple VP (it leaves) now finds itself attached instead to an infinitive 'to leave', but that infinitive, being a syntactic dependent of the main VP 'is said', naturally assumes the same temporal reference as its superordinate**, i.e. an indisputably present one (for it is said NOW).

The bus is said (now) to have left (now?!?) yesterday (not now). :tick: :roll:
What am I missing here?
EDIT: I think the thing that I am missing is aspectual in nature. The rule you provided concerns verbs in unmarked (and not perfective) aspect. Right?

(**This always holds true where the main VP is passive. Cf.)

Seemingly not (to me). EDIT: Unless in unmarked aspect.

He is said/known/believed/considered to be working for the good of the people.
entails the belief/knowledge, etc. that he is working...

He was said/known/believed/considered to be working for the good of the people.
entails the belief/knowledge, etc. that he was working...


He will be said/known/believed/considered to be working for the good of the people.
entails the belief/knowledge, etc. that he will be working...

and so forth.)

Fair enough. :up:

Thus [2] fails on account of a fundamental internal incompatability: one verb phrase cannot be forced by other sentence elements to refer simultaneously to both the present and the future.

He was said (past) to be given (past) the money last year (past).

Wherein lies the temporal incongruity here I have no clue. :-?

And it need hardly be pointed out that such a sentence is not remotely improved by being transposed into the past tense, simply replacing one temporal conflict with another, hence an asterisk also for:

[3] *The train was said (past1) to leave (past1) at 17:03 the following afternoon (later than past1 but still past).

Here, here I can see the temporal conflict though.

Philo, thanks for your time. I appreciate it and benefit from it a lot. :up: Please answer the questions that came up in this post of mine. :up:

 

[5jj]

The discussion is fascinating, but the long posts are becoming almost unreadable,
Any chance of asking and answering one question at a time?

 

[corum]

The discussion is fascinating,

but the long posts are becoing almost unreadable,

Any chance of asking and answering one question at a time?

More than at that pace getting to the bottom of things. Philo's comments are cool even if you get them in spades.

 

[BobK]

The discussion is fascinating, but the long posts are becoming almost unreadable,
Any chance of asking and answering one question at a time?

Indeed. :up: And the seemingly random alternation between quoting styles makes it impossible to follow who said, or is said to have said, what.

But I think that when there is an academic argument it's impossible not to follow a number of threads simultaneously. Perhaps the solution involves a certain self-discipline - when the original poster's question has been found to have a range of possible/disputable answers, tell the OP and start a new thread in another forum (with a link for people who want to pick nits).

b

 

[philo2009]

A very belated revision to my earlier post, with apologies:

corum wrote:

It is said that he (is given)/(gets) the prize at the ceremony this year. Rumour has it that the prize is scheduled to be awarded to him for this year. :tick:
He was said to be given the prize at the ceremony last year.

There are two separate issues to be addressed here:

(1) The acceptability or otherwise of

(*)He is given the prize this year.

(construed as a 'scheduled future')

and

(2) The possibility of transposing such (if it exists) into the form of a reported past event, i.e. the acceptability or otherwise of the sentence originally at issue

(*)He was said to be given the prize last year.


Regarding (1):
In my previous comments, I noted that "dynamic present simple tense-forms...do not generally collocate with definite time adverbials such as 'this year.'"

Of course, a dynamic present simple tense-form can collocate with a definite future time adverbial, in a sentence denoting a scheduled future event, such as

[1] The train leaves at 17:03 tomorrow afternoon.

However, the acceptability of this particular type of sentence depends to a great extent on semantic/sense factors, not merely mechanical, structural ones.

For all their structural similarity to [1], we would not accept

*A cold north wind blows tomorrow morning.

for

A cold north wind will blow tomorrow morning.

or

*I enjoy the party tonight!

for

I'm going to enjoy the party tonight!

since there can obviously be no 'schedule' for wind blowing, any more than there can be one for people to enjoy themselves. The notion of a prize being awarded according to a schedule is equally preposterous; thus

*He is given the prize this year.

would likewise not be considered an acceptable alternative to

*He will be/is going to be given the prize this year.

(An axiom worth bearing in mind: syntactic soundness is a necessary, but not always sufficient, precondition of linguistic acceptability.)


Regarding (2):
Temporarily setting aside issue (1), even if we begin with an acceptable scheduled future sentence, such as [1] above, we cannot simply perform on it any old structural transformation that we please and assume that the resulting sentence will also be acceptable.

In

[2] *The train is said to leave at 17:03 tomorrow afternoon.

the future time phrase that would originally - by dint of a rather special 'grammatical licence' - have acceptably modified a finite present simple VP (it leaves) now finds itself attached instead to an infinitive 'to leave', but that infinitive, being a syntactic dependent of the main VP 'is said', naturally assumes the same temporal reference as its superordinate, i.e. an indisputably present one (for it is said NOW).


Thus [2] fails on account of a fundamental internal incompatability: one verb phrase cannot be forced by other sentence elements to refer simultaneously to both the present and the future.

And it need hardly be pointed out that such a sentence is not remotely improved by being transposed into the past tense, simply replacing one temporal conflict with another, hence an asterisk also for

[3] *The train was said to leave at 17:03 the following afternoon.

Thus, even when we begin with an acceptable, sensible scheduled future, this kind of transformation simply does not work. It should come as no surprise then that, if we begin with an absurd, flawed sentence (such as *He is given the prize this year) we will fail all the more miserably!

 

[philo2009]

What does [1a] mean?
=It is said (by people in general) that he is at the ceremony this year.
(The claim relating to his attendance is being made on a regular basis now, while the ceremony is in progress.)


Regarding your acceptability judgments concerning the two sentences' *([1] and [2])* grammaticality, are you sure you did not mean the reverse?
Absolutely positive!

[1] He was said/believed to be at the ceremony last year.

Possible, because the past event of reporting is contemporaneous with the past state of his being there (just in [1a] above the present event of reporting is contemporaneous with the present state of his being there).

Note that, if the act of reporting were present but still related to his attendance at the same past event, I would say

He is said/believed to have been at the ceremony last year.

with, once again, the relative anteriority/posteriority of the VPs being clearly signalled by their structures.

[2] *He was said/believed to be given the prize at the ceremony last year.

Wrong for reasons explained in detail elsewhere.

Compare, however, the possible sentences:

He is said to have been given the prize last year.
(PRESENT report + real PAST event)

He was said to have been given the prize the year before.
(PAST report + earlier PAST event)


The asterisk does not denote ungrammaticality, otherwise I have lost you.
You are right. It was left there in error after a copy-and-paste. I will delete it later from the original post.


:up:
For current events you accept the use of the present continuous but you are against the simple present. Warum?
By 'current events' I mean 'ongoing events', which are, of course never expressed by dynamic verbs in the simple present. I apologize if the term 'current' was in any way misleading.


I can't make anything of this.
Again, I am perhaps being obscure in my use of signs: I am using the double asterisk simply to link a comment to a footnote (N.B.), so as to avoid confusion with the single asterisk denoting unacceptability (although apparently I have not succeeded in doing so!)

 

[philo2009]

The bus is said (now) to have left (now?!?) yesterday (not now). :tick: :roll:
What am I missing here?
EDIT: I think the thing that I am missing is aspectual in nature. The rule you provided concerns verbs in unmarked (and not perfective) aspect. Right?

Basically, yes.

The bus is said to have left yesterday.

is fine (if a little formal), while

*The bus is said to leave soon.

is not. The problem is the collocation of the reported passive with a simple dynamic infinitive in an attempt to refer to a relative future event (scheduled or otherwise). It simply doesn't work, as compared with e.g.

The bus is said to leave every day at 5:03 sharp.

I am, however - upon much reflection - a little disinclined to state quite as categorically as I did in my earlier, now revised, post that this temporal co-referentiality rule between main reporting verb and dependent infinitive applies in all conceivable circumstances: I think that it is a strong tendency rather than an inviolable rule, which applies to a greater or lesser extent depending on a fairly complex array of factors, including the particular reporting verb that we happen to be using and the dynamicity/stativity of the verb phrases in question.

It just so happens to apply particularly strongly - strongly enough to warrant an asterisk - in the kind of double-passive reported construction exemplified by the sentence originally at issue (He was said to be given the prize last year), i.e.

[NP (be) V1-ed to be V2-ed...]

(where V1 is a reporting verb and where the whole is semantically equivalent to People V1 that NP (be) V2ed.)

He was said (past) to be given (past) the money last year (past).
Wherein lies the temporal incongruity here I have no clue. :-?
In the fact that Time B (one point last year at which the event was reported) and Time A (some other time last year - presumably an earlier one - at which the event supposedly occurred) are being represented here as one and the same. The sentence should read

He was said to have been given the money last year.

to show the relative anteriority of the event to the report concerning it.

(Unless, of course, you mean that his being given money was an habitual event, occurring on an unspecified number of occasions last year. Only then would the sentence be meaningful/sensible as written.)

This kind of error (one to which, I think, only a learner would be prone - no disrespect intended!) is similar in certain respects to one commonly made, at least in daily speech, even by natives, e.g.

?I said that I met her there a couple of months before.

(representing, if strictly interpreted, the impossible putative original

*"I meet her here a couple of months ago".)

rather than appropriately tense-shifted/meaningful

I said that I had met her there a couple of months before.

(< "I met her here a couple of months ago".)


Please answer the questions that came up in this post of mine. :up:
I hope I have!
If not, ask away, and I'll endeavour to confuse you even further!

 

[philo2009]

I would like, if I may, to elaborate slightly on my earlier assertion that

The notion of a prize being awarded according to a schedule is equally preposterous

, this providing the semantic/sense grounds for ruling out

*He is given the prize this year.

as a so-called 'scheduled' future, akin to e.g.

The bus leaves in ten minutes.
The lesson starts at 3:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Corum then hypothesized that, given that the decision to award him the prize has already been made, the event can henceforth legitimately be described as 'scheduled'.

As reasonable as this counter-claim may seem at first glance, it rests upon a confusion of two different things:

(1) the holding of a ceremony during a particular year, during which a prize is to be presented

(2) the selection of a certain person to receive that prize, to the exclusion of any other candidate during the year in question.

While (1) is clearly a scheduled event, (2), equally clearly, is not: when we speak of his 'being given' the prize, we are not referring simply to its physical handover, but rather to the fact of his, rather than any other person's, being determined to be its most worthy recipient in that particular year.

It would, of course, not be impossible, with some minor modifications, to turn a bad sentence into a possible one, by e.g. reviewing in advance the order of events at the ceremony:

He ascends the podium at 2:33; he is given the prize at 2:34, and commences his address at 2:35.

but this would be a significantly different sentence from that originally proposed!

 

[corum]

The problem is the collocation of the reported passive with a simple dynamic infinitive in an attempt to refer to a relative future event (scheduled or otherwise). It simply doesn't work, as compared with e.g.

The bus is said to leave every day at 5:03 sharp.

This is obviously one of the many arcane secrets of the English language, to which most people, especially NNES, have no access. When native speakers outside linguistic professions bring their correct judgment on the acceptability of similar sentences, what do they draw on other than their superficial theoretical competence in linguistics? I think I have read more grammar books than the average Joe Blow, but still my judgments on correctness are far more unreliable than theirs (in certain situations). And this causes great sorrow in me.

I am, however - upon much reflection - a little disinclined to state quite as categorically as I did in my earlier, now revised, post that this temporal co-referentiality rule between main reporting verb and dependent infinitive applies in all conceivable circumstances: I think that it is a strong tendency rather than an inviolable rule, which applies to a greater or lesser extent depending on a fairly complex

array of factors
including the particular reporting verb that we happen to be using and the dynamicity/stativity of the verb phrases in question.

That is what I was dreading having to read. Especially the parts in bold type.

It just so happens to apply particularly strongly - strongly enough to warrant an asterisk - in the kind of double-passive reported construction exemplified by the sentence originally at issue (He was said to be given the prize last year), i.e.

[NP (be) V1-ed to be V2-ed...]

(where V1 is a reporting verb and where the whole is semantically equivalent to People V1 that NP (be) V2ed.)

He was said (past) to be given (past) the money last year (past).
Wherein lies the temporal incongruity here I have no clue. :-?
In the fact that Time B (one point last year at which the event was reported) and Time A (some other time last year - presumably an earlier one - at which the event supposedly occurred) are being represented here as one and the same.

:up:

The sentence should read

He was said to have been given the money last year.

to show the relative anteriority of the event to the report concerning it.

(Unless, of course, you mean that his being given money was an habitual event, occurring on an unspecified number of occasions last year. Only then would the sentence be meaningful/sensible as written.)

:up:

Please answer the questions that came up in this post of mine. :up:
I hope I have!
If not, ask away, and I'll endeavour to confuse you even further!

 

[BobK]

As philo2009 and corum are the last two standing, I invite them to pursue this rathole, if they want to, by PM. Its pursuit in public is just an invitation to further bad feeling. The thread is closed.

b