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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5828 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes  5 sounds | Message 1 of 8 08 May 2011 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, this is a question for native speakers and other members who feel proficient to answer. Do you think the following phrase is correct / grammatical :
"It is a pitiful existence, one that has no reason for its being." I know it sound archaic / literary but is it grammatical ? I have some doubts about the use of "being" here; Let's compare with some other examples: It is a pointless act one that has no reason of its being conducted. It is an ignorant nation one that has no desire for its being united. It is a weak governor one who has no concept of his being in charge. My thinking is, in all these cases "for its being" can be simplified to "for being" ( but not in the first sentence; because unlike it, in all these examples "being" is followed by an adjective or a verb. ). In general, what's your opinion of the expression "for its being" ? Is it very archaic, slightly archaic or just plain wrong? :-). I think I've seen it several times but not very often and in any case not in colloquial speech. p.s. Hmm. I guess the first sentence can also be reduced to "It is a pitiful existence one that has no reason for being" -> There's no point in existing if there is no reason for existing. :)). Edited by Sennin on 08 May 2011 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5463 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 8 08 May 2011 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the bold-faced example, I believe "being" is used as a synonym for "existence".
In the remaining three sentences, I believe "its being" is used to mean "it having been". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5828 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 8 08 May 2011 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Splog, I think you're right. In this case "being" has a different meaning. But I wonder if people will accept it as natural-sounding, given that the other meaning is much more common and people generally expect to see an adjective after "being". And there is also the question of the prepositions. Is it always "for its being", or depending on the verb it can also be "of its being" ?
Edited by Sennin on 08 May 2011 at 2:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6233 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 4 of 8 08 May 2011 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It doesn't strike me as archaic, and it's only literary because the subject matter isn't exactly in normal day to day discourse. "no reason for" is a perfectly normal phrase, as is "being" to be synonymous with existence.
However, your first sample sentence, ignoring punctuation, strikes me as nonsense. The other two are also odd, I'm not sure exactly why without thinking about it. "being conducted" is a verb, the passive voice of the imperfect if I'm not mistaken (and I could be, I find these things hard to point out in English). Those sentences should read as follows: It is a pointless act, one that has no reason for being conducted. It is an ignorant nation, one that has no desire to be united ("for being united" is probably grammatically correct, but I feel this has to be like this to make sense, and I think this is the perfect past). He is a weak governor, one who has no concept of being in charge (has to be "he", can't be "it", unsure why). Then again, that's my idiolect, I'm sure others'll differ. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5828 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 5 of 8 08 May 2011 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, thanks :). Edited by Sennin on 08 May 2011 at 9:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5463 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 8 08 May 2011 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
I usually avoid fancy sounding grammar terms, but maybe this time we need some: The three non-bolded examples in the original posts are perfectly correct English, albeit a little literary. They all rely on gerunds. A gerund is a verb form that looks like the present participle (the "ing" form in English). You can combine a gerund with a possessive noun. For example: "The baby's screaming" This is now a noun phrase, and can be used wherever we would use a nous: "I am kept awake by the baby's screaming" Likewise, we can combine a gerund with a possessive pronoun: "My computer is unreliable due to its malfunctioning" Furthermore, we can also modify these gerundal noun phrases with adjectives: "Women are repulsed by my looking ugly" And for the verb "to be" the gerund is, of course, "being" So, in the following example: "The relationship was doomed due to his being married" "his" is a possessive pronoun "being" is a gerund "married" is an adjective And all together "his being married" is a noun phrase. With all these things in mind, if you look back at the examples in the original post they (fingers crossed) will make sense. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6233 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 7 of 8 09 May 2011 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Rereading them, I agree with you, bar the previous objections I had of "reason of", and "It is" as opposed to "He is". I cannot fully decide why I accept, "He is a weak governer, one who ..." or "It is a weak governer who is ..." but not "It is a weak governer, one who is ...".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5805 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 8 09 May 2011 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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To me it's archaic.
Certain old-school grammarians will tell you that gerunds should always take the possessive, but normally I use the object pronouns. So Splog's example of: "The relationship was doomed due to his being married" I would say as: "The relationship was doomed due to him being married" (or simply "because he was married", but never mind.) Sennin, your original examples are much harder to evaluate, because each exhibits several features that strike me as odd. First up, I wouldn't use "one that"/"one who", but simply "that". "desire for (its) being united" seems unnecessarily long, and there are multiple ways of reformulating it that seem more likely. The possessive in your examples isn't wrong per se, but I'd definitely call it archaic and unnecessary. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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