ellenkushner | Grammar Patrol: Forbidden Fruit

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Grammar Patrol: Forbidden Fruit

What is with this forbade from? Isn't it forbade to?

I hear/see it all the time now - on NPR, in a recent (excellent) story in the NYTimes, even on Neil Gaiman's blog! It's (mis?)used most often in the past tense: "They forbade them from landing on the beach." Isn't it "They they forbade them to land..."? Move it to the imperative and it becomes clearer: surely it's "I forbid you to open that door!" - not "I forbid you from opening that door!"

Is this a language elision, a regionalism, or what?

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Tense mixup, I think. "He forbid me to lick the stamp" vs. "I was forbidden from licking the stamp." Hm. Or is that a person issue?

Crud. I should ask my sis-in-law, the Grammar Hammer.

What you are describing is neither tense (past/present/future) nor voice (passive/active), but a matter of the object of the verb: "to lick" is an infinitive phrase, while "from licking" is a prepositional phrase with a gerund in it.

...are you single?

Not exactly?

(But, man, I haven't had a chance to use grammar words since high school.)

Ah, there it is! I knew there was some reasonable explanation.

Thanks!

It might be regional. Moving it to the imperative didn't make "from" sound any less correct. Well, your particular example sounds better with to, but "I forbid you to going to Alyson's party" vs "I forbid you from going to Alyson's party" seems to me to come out strongly in favor of "from"

However, the first one is ungrammatical ("to going"?), and if we change the "going" in it to "go", then we get:

"I forbid you to go to Alyson's party"
vs.
"I forbid you from going to Alyson's party"

and that in my mind comes out strongly in favor of "to".

The first ing was a typo. What I thought I wrote was what you corrected it to be, and in the corrected form, I strongly prefer the "from" option.

Then we definitely have a difference in perception here. Interesting.

It also highlights one of the worst problems I have writing. I am incredibly bad at proof reading my own work. If it hasn't been months since I wrote whatever I am proof reading, I tend to read what I intended to say instead of what was on the page.

Don't worry, -everybody- has -that- problem. It's best not to try to proof your own work until it's sat so long you forgot you wrote it.

Um. I'm making this up to meet the case, but how's about you're forbidden to [verb] and/or forbidden from [noun]? It could be that both are legitimate, that the preposition varies accordingly; and landing/opening in your examples are gerunds, and hence certainly nouns.

And you don't mention the third alternative, which is no preposition at all, which also goes with nouns: "I forbid you this place!" "I forbid your leaving!" etc...

Here, have a journal article discussing some history of the verb "forbid" and its subordinate clauses (to, from, that).

http://www.sendspace.com/file/pr1ed6 (http://www.sendspace.com/file/pr1ed6)

Wow. Thanks!!

Bad things happen to language. Over here, it's now more common to say "he was sat" or "he was stood" than to get it correct. And, even though I work in publishing, where you would think people would know better, I am forever hearing "It's been agreed between [Fiona] and I".

/undoubtedly middle-aged grump.

Oh, I know!! I'm always astonished at people not knowing "I" from "me" - all you have to do most times is lose [Fiona] and you've got it! I have to bite my tongue to keep from muttering the correction - that would make me altogether too much like my mother.

Almost as annoying are those who punt by using "myself" ("Are you going to the store with Nancy and myself?") to avoid making the choice.

Re. the I/me confusion, I'm convinced that the users of "I" as an object are convinced of their correctness because they've frequently been corrected as kids when using "me" as a subject. (John and me are leaving now.) "Me" somehow becomes tainted.

As for the use of "I" in a double object (He gave it to John and I.), just get them to switch the two parts to see how ignorant it sounds.(He gave it to I and John?)

Might be regional. In your imperatives examples, "forbid from" sounded more "correct" to my West Coast ears.

"I forbid you entry" sounds very formal to me, something a British butler or angel might say. Whereas "I forbid you from entering" sounds like something a parent might say, although "don't go in there" would be far more likely. *wry smile*

But I am not a grammarian, obviously, and I'm told we sometimes phrase things weird out here.

I would vote for 'forbade to', but it's sadly true that *how* words are said often changes the grammatical rules for those words. I say this as a person who has been on an hour long conference call w/ various departments trying to decide if it’s “log into” or “log on to” for our website. Oh the joys of corporate life, and company wide e-mail usage.

Now, I’m wondering if I can fit ‘forbade to’ into the next e-mail I template out… hmmm….

Heh, I recently had a running argument with a coworker about how it shouldn't be "log into" but "log in to" because the logical division was [log in] [to]. (Obviously, we were both writers.) But that could take you another hour.

And they're probably not even logging in to the website anyway, just loading it and reading it.

Anyway, then we both got laid off so it didn't matter any more! ;)

(er, should that be layed off?)

Anyone who insists on "log in to" over "log into" must be in conniptions over the word "blog", and is probably not too happy about nicknames like "Ned" (or the word "nickname" itself, for that matter).

Nah, 'blog is cute. I don't really get your point. They're not the same thing at all.

Well, "log in" is an established phrase, even sometimes spelled "login", so to take the "in" and attach it to the "to" to make "log into" is rather like taking "web log" and attaching the "b" to "log" to make "blog".

I don't know, even "forbade" sounds wrong to me.

The grammar rule I wish I'd never learned (because many learned people do it wrong all the time and now I know) is about using possessives with - uh, are they gerunds? "I told Olive about Popeye going to the bar" is wrong, it has to be "I told Olive about Popeye's going to the bar."

Sigh.

My understanding is that the use of possessives with gerunds depends on exactly what you're trying to communicate (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/gerunds.htm#possessive)....

You are right. They are wrong. It makes me crazy too.

Yep. Thanks.

It's very interesting hearing - I mean reading - everyone earnestly discussing what "SOUNDS RIGHT" - I mean, obviously it sounds right, or people wouldn't do it.

That doesn't make it correct.

I believe them both to be correct, depending on context. Please don't hit me.

(Did you know that Czech has a transgressive case? It's archaic, but it's nice to know that there exists a language with such a splendidly peculiar case.)

What's a transgressive case? I'm intrigued, and google isn't helping me any :(

I speak no Czech.

I ran into a reference to the transgressive a while ago and poked around, with limited success. I concluded that it's similar to the Latin ablative absolute, but with some kind of opaque cultural context in which it's a) hardly ever used any more, and b) more likely to be used in a nostalgic sense, which goes along with a) pretty well.

I got some pretty surprising things when I tried "transgressive case" in Wikipedia.

My own pet annoyance is different than, which I see everywhere these days, when I thought the proper form was different from. Where did I go wrong?

ME, TOO!!! Drives me NUTS!!!

That, actually, was going to have been another post.

But why bother...

"forbid from" sounds weird to me, too.

My recent pet peeve is "gifted" as a verb. How is "This fabulous rat skeleton was gifted to me" or "I was gifted with this lovely rat skeleton" an improvement on "This fabulous rat skeleton was given to me" or, better yet, "My boss gave me this lovely rat skeleton"?

Someone? Bueller??

Can we add "authored" to that list?

I have never, ever authored a work. I would just like to go on record saying that.

Thanks for gifting me with that information. I will henceforth consider myself forbidden from using "authored" as a verb.

I've noticed "from" slithering into a number of places it's neither wanted nor needed, but that one stops me cold every time. The NYT seems to have embraced it with all possible body parts, but "forbade them to land on the beach" sounds better.

It doesn't matter which one sounds better, it matters which form is correct. I believe "from" has been gaining popularity and I also think newspapers had an influence on that. Frankly at this point either of these two words seems to fit the expression but I think I rather ask the opinion of my private esl tutoring (http://www.private-english-tutor.com/) for more valuable arguments.

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Grammar Patrol: Forbidden Fruit

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