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stranger
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stranger
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Can anyone help me with a curly grammar question??
My children's school has recently adopted the motto "To learn is living fully." I have approached them saying that this doesn't sound right to me - that surely "To learn is to live fully" would be more grammatically correct. But they didn't agree - they think it sounds fine! So now I am trying to find out whether there is indeed some grammatical rule that is being violated by this strange construction that they have come up with.
I have poured over grammar & usage textbooks, learning more than I ever knew before about copulative verbs, gerunds, infinitives etc, but none of them has dealt with this specific issue of whether it's OK to have an infinitive and a gerund on either side of a copulative verb. Or have I misunderstood the structure of this sentence??
Any grammarians out there who can help me with this one? Or if this isn't the right forum for this question, can you point me to someone/somewhere else I could ask it??
Thanks!
Kate
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I don't suppose it's actually ungrammatical, but it's not saying what they want to say. What they're saying is that it's the infinitive form of the verb learn that's living fully. To say what they want to say would require parallelism on both sides of the is.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeah, but...
living could be considered a gerund.. and gerunds are 'continuous states'
So "to learn" (infinate) is living (continous state of being) fully.
it's inelegant.. but not ungrammatical.
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old hand
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old hand
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I suspect they will not give any quarter on this no matter what you are able to "prove", as they have probably already invested $$ in materials using their brilliant slogan and don't want to change everything. Too bad they didn't ask a creative person, who could have come up with some better ideas, such as "Life is Learning", "Living fully means learning continually" or something along those lines... :0)
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member
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member
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MWDEU on faulty parallelism
Last edited by goofy; 08/06/08 09:08 PM.
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stranger
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stranger
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Hey, "life is learning", I like that!
I think I'll suggest it to them. Thanks!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeahbut, in the interests of parallelism, living is learning.
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old hand
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old hand
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My children's school has recently adopted the motto "To learn is living fully." I have approached them saying that this doesn't sound right to me - that surely "To learn is to live fully" would be more grammatically correct.
I don't think it is grammatically incorrect, rather, grammatically clunky. As Faldage points out. "To learn fully is to live fully" Hey, "life is learning", I like that!
I think I'll suggest it to them. Thanks! But is it living life fully? I think the original (though clunky)has a sense of striving about it that the kids could be rewarded for in the end. Kia ora Kate.
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old hand
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old hand
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yeahbut, in the interests of parallelism, living is learning. Why is this not parallel? life is a noun and learning is also. learning But you can interpret it in more than one way, which makes it all the more interesting! :0)
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Joined: Feb 2008
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old hand
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old hand
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Hey, "life is learning", I like that!
I think I'll suggest it to them. Thanks! But is it living life fully? I think the original (though clunky)has a sense of striving about it that the kids could be rewarded for in the end. Kia ora Kate. Elegant beats clunky, even if the original notion may not be thoroughly represented! :0) And thanks, Kate!
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