Rents instead of owns
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Coby Lubliner wrote to ask:
This morning, on NPR's Morning Edition, Elizabeth Blair discussed Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" sequel and said (seemingly reading from a prepared text) that the new Gordon Gekko "rents instead of owns". What do you think of this phrasing, compared with (what I think of as) the standard "instead of owning" (or maybe "rather than owns")? Are there precedents for a finite verb as the object of a preposition?
Well, I ain't no syntactician, as Cow Cow Davenport didn't say, and my copy of CGEL is on the other side of the world, but I guess that I can discuss Elizabeth Blair's wording until a member of the Syntacticians Union shows up.
The first thing to say is that the pattern "VERBs instead of VERBs" is a fairly common one, even in well-edited texts (use web search to find out where these come from, if you care):
On the other hand, he constantly remembers something he should be hoping for; for in thought the future is somethign he has already taken up, he has experienced it in thought, and that which he has experienced is something he remembers instead of hopes for.
Many have heard an inner Call to live from a full heart – to take responsibility for, and to participate in the joy of, creating a more fulfilling life – and a world where everyone thrives instead of merely survives.
What describes a free woman? A woman who has disowned beliefs and who has control over her life. A women who thinks instead of believes.
So I wouldn't have noticed Ms. Blair's "rents intead of owns" if Coby hadn't written about it. But there's a wrinkle that validates Coby's reaction. Consider the lack of parallelism in this example:
You’re tapping into what’s often called the right brain, that part of you that makes new connections, that knows instead of thinks, that sees the whole picture instead of analyzing the parts.
The second "instead of" has the pattern "VERBS NP instead of VERBING NP", not "VERBS NP instead of VERBS NP". When the constrasting verbs have objects, my intuition agrees that using the the finite form for the second verb would be ungrammatical:
*He sees the whole picture instead of analyzes the parts.
Similarly in this example:
When faced with a tough decision, or unclear path, he takes action instead of waiting for orders.
*When faced with a tough decision, or unclear path, he takes action instead of waits for orders.
(I think that the same thing is true when either of the contrasting verbs has an object, though by this time my syntactic intuitions are even less reliable than such things normally are.)
It's no surprise that "VERBs NP instead of VERBing NP" is possible here — prepositional phrases like "instead of VERBing NP" are ubiquitous, including as sentence-initial adjuncts:
Lieutenant Law, commanding the Clifton, left his vessel to communicate the demand of the enemy to Renshaw ; but instead of waiting for orders, he hoisted a white flag and suspended the battle.
So the puzzling thing is just that instead of can be used as a sort of quasi-conjunction to combine contrasting finite verbs, but not verb phrases.
Note also that it's apparently OK if objects and other complements are left outside the quasi-conjunction:
That guy who bought instead of sold the shares was a classic… what a doofus.
… is it possible that the old button opened instead of closed the circuit to start the music […]?
She even pulls off Kate's deadpan "I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple," which Grayson speaks instead of sings in the movie
I feel that even when both contrasting verbs lack objects, there may be a semantic (as well as a syntactic) difference between the finite verb form and the gerund-participle:
In the case of the obsessional neurotic, his problem is that he identifies with his depressed mother's disavowal of words; like her, he acts instead of feeling.
In the eyes of Chinese politicians it is his (Wu Pei-fu 's) weakest point that he acts instead of talking.
In these cases, it seems to me that "acts instead of feels" and "acts instead of talks" would be grammatical but not quite what the writers meant.
It's not a surprise that instead of can contrast infinitives, even with complements:
In his prayer he summons YHWH to pay attention to his own people, instead of to leave it all to Moses' care.
Checking the reset jumper might show that it is set to reset the BIOS instead of to leave it alone.
Drivers use their horns a bit differently here; they beep continuously to warn someone that they're overtaking, instead of to complain about others' driving.
But in addition to finite forms, some untensed verb forms also allow this quasi-conjunctive intead of:
There are other much friendlier driving schools around who want to see you succeed instead of fail.
Similarly, adjectives can be contrasted:
The train had stopped, but the passengers seemed irritated instead of happy that the trip was over.
Note that instead of can be used to connect other parts of speech quasi-conjunctively as well:
The subclavian vein sometimes passes behind instead of in front of the scalenus anterior muscle.
OK, perhaps this clarifies the question instead of offering (*offers) an answer. But it's time for me to go check out what's happening at InterSpeech 2010. Your syntactician should be along shortly.
[Update — So much for my intuitions. The COCA corpus has 15 instances of the pattern {instead of [vvz]}. Of these, three conjoin tensed verbs with direct objects:
(Bill Clinton, on talk radio in 1995): We can do this in a way that brings the American people together instead of divides them. We can do this in a way that lifts the incomes and the job prospects of the American people instead of diminishes them.
(Journal article): Wilson emphasizes the futility of reversing tragedy in this fascinating piece, in which Othello's triumph ends the story instead of begins it, and Desdemona comes to life.
It's true that two of these come from one performance by Bill Clinton. And 3 in 400 million words is not a lot. But still.
The other 12 are the expected (by me) conjunctions of bare tensed verbs:
(Time Magazine): Economists began fretting that, for the first time, a real estate bust would throw the country into recession — a sustained period when the economy shrinks instead of grows and lots of people lose their jobs.
(Wired Magazine): Thanks to BD technology, you can watch, say, the Joker's entrance and then get a picture-in-picture special feature that shows instead of tells how it was handled.
The pattern {rather than [vvz]} get 157 hits, and a fair proportion of these conjoin tensed verb phrases with post-verbal complements. ]
SilenceIsGolden said,
September 25, 2010 @ 10:59 pm
When I read your headline, I thought at first you were referring to the same article I just read. I stumbled over something similar.
In a Yahoo! Canada News article about Facebook's Zuckerberg, the author writes: "The couple doesn't even own the digs, renting instead."
Now I wonder: Is this some fallout from the real estate crisis??
bloix said,
September 25, 2010 @ 11:06 pm
There is an idiom, "do you rent or own," in which the object that would normally be necessary – your home – doesn't need to be specified. The structure of the sentence here – "He rents instead of owns" – maintains the idiom, which is important in this context where the expression, although it is being used literally, has some metaphorical content.
Ben Zimmer said,
September 25, 2010 @ 11:13 pm
@SilenceIsGolden: Renting-instead-of-owning is apparently a mark of distinction among the New Über-Rich. A Vanity Fair profile of Zuckerberg's colleague Sean Parker describes his "palatial (rented) New York town house."
Tim said,
September 25, 2010 @ 11:21 pm
Could the preference for the -ing form have to do with considering instead of to be a preposition which requires something noun-like (in this case, a gerund) as an object?
[(myl) Well, um, that was Coby's question: what's a preposition doing with a finite verb as its object? It's no mystery, as I observed, that the -ing forms always work. The odd thing is that the finite forms sometimes do as well.]
John Cowan said,
September 25, 2010 @ 11:49 pm
Rather than works just like instead of, and since than can be either a preposition or a conjunction, that's not too surprising.
[(myl) I'm not sure it's true that "Rather than works just like instead of". It's easy to find reputable examples where rather than conjoins finite verb phrases with post-verbal complements, e.g.
He is what is called a "morning caller," meaning that he collects his own mail rather than waits for delivery, […]
.. this assumes that he drops the stone rather than throws it …
… we will ensure that iTunes checks the firmware on the server rather than opens Saurik toApple!
My intuitions are somewhat fried by jet lag, but it seems to me that all of these are pretty bad with instead of instead of rather than.]
Tim said,
September 25, 2010 @ 11:58 pm
After reading the post, I even looked back over it to make sure I hadn't missed anything about prepositions that was already in there, with clearly little success. So, never mind. Pretend I was never here.
[(myl) Coby Lubliner: "Are there precedents for a finite verb as the object of a preposition?" But you're right, I never explicitly agreed that of is a preposition, or explained that the reason "prepositional phrases like 'instead of VERBing NP' are ubiquitous" is that -ing forms of verbs can generally be used to fill nominal roles. ]
groki said,
September 26, 2010 @ 1:40 am
my syntactic intuition doesn't reject "He sees the whole picture instead of analyzes the parts." (it does feel more peculiar / less formal than "…analyzing…" but still OK.)
another quasi-conjunction similar to "instead of" and "rather than" is "as opposed to":
rents as opposed to owns.
the passengers seemed irritated as opposed to happy that the trip was over.
The subclavian vein sometimes passes behind as opposed to in front of the scalenus anterior muscle.
Checking the reset jumper might show that it is set to reset the BIOS as opposed to leave it alone.this assumes that he drops the stone as opposed to throws it
etc.
groki said,
September 26, 2010 @ 1:50 am
also "aoparently OK":
my intuition is that, if you wanted a "guaran-damn-tee"-style form of apparently a-OK, you probably should have spelled it a-O-pparently-K!
:)
Ran Ari-Gur said,
September 26, 2010 @ 2:08 am
> Note also that it's aoparently OK if objects and other complements are left outside the quasi-conjunction: […]
More than that — I think that only the tensed form works in that case. If we replace the second verb with the -ing form, we get results that I would consider ungrammatical:
> That guy who bought instead of *selling the shares was a classic… what a doofus.
> … is it possible that the old button opened instead of *closing the circuit to start the music […]?
> She even pulls off Kate's deadpan "I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple," which Grayson speaks instead of *singing in the movie
(Or at least, I no longer find that the two verbs can share the object in quite the same way. In the first two, the object belongs solely to the gerund-participle; in the third, it belongs solely to the tensed verb. In all cases, the meaning is affected significantly as a result.)
Joe said,
September 26, 2010 @ 3:08 am
Haven't the time to think through the issue, but I think the question about the preposition is on to something. My hunch is that when "instead of" conjoins two finite verbs, it has been reanalyzed as a coordinator. When the second form is a gerund-participle, "instead of" means "in the place of" (in stead of). This is related to the different ways the verb form following "instead of" receives a temporal interpretation.
[I think Joe is exactly right, and the hunt for how or why a preposition could take a tensed verb as complement is a wild goose chase. What is going on here is that instead of is being used as if it were (or if you're more confident that this is here to stay, has developed into) a coordinator. Like or, it can link two items of any category if they function in similar ways. So rents instead of owns is analogous to rents or owns. We seem to have a new route for the development of coordinators here. (Phrases like bought instead of selling are not in conflict with this at all: those could involve the preposition use of instead, since you can always have a gerund-participial clause as complement of a preposition.) Nice work, Joe. —GKP]
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
September 26, 2010 @ 3:48 am
It might be my non-nativeness, but I don't have "instead of" as grammatical between infinitives. (I can't think off-hand of a construction that can coordinate full infinitives in "to", and that's probably what causes the crosswire)
Pflaumbaum said,
September 26, 2010 @ 6:19 am
Ran Ari-Gur – all your examples are fine for me, and they don't requisition the object for the sole use of the gerund-participle.
Could be a BrE thing I suppose, but someone ends up saying that in every thread…
I also have no issue with your 'latter'…
Bertil Wennergren said,
September 26, 2010 @ 6:44 am
As a non-native speaker I hesitate to add that according to my ear "instead of VERBs" has to (immediately) follow the finite verb it relates to:
? She sings instead of speaks.
* Instead of speaks, she sings.
Only the first seems (somewhat) OK to me. But:
She sings instead of speaking.
Instead of speaking, she sings.
Both OK. No?
[Bertil's intuitions may be non-native, but they are spot on. And the reason you have to have instead of speaks adjacent to sings, and *Instead of speaks she sings is ungrammatical, is that you can position a coordinate outside of its coordinate structure. Notice the parallel: She sings and dances is fine, *And dances, she sings is not. —GKP]
Nathan McCoy said,
September 26, 2010 @ 7:16 am
Your first two examples of "instead of" + infinitive feel wrong to me. The third is a little hinky, but workable. Replacing "instead of" with "rather than" feels better, but still not ideal.
(I am a native English speaker in the Pacific Northwest, for the purposes of dialect anecdata.)
Joe said,
September 26, 2010 @ 8:34 am
Thinking a bit more about this, I do think that this is firstly a question about reanalysis, and then secondly a question about constraints on coordination. That is, "instead of" has been reanalyzed as a coordinator in "rents instead of owns" but in "rents instead of owning,"of" is a preposition that would take a gerund-participle as complement. The question then becomes what kind of constraints there are on coordination. It does seem that a tensed form of the verb with an NP complement is problematic, as Mark points out. Maybe it help if the two VPs being coordinated are somewhat contrasting in meaning, as in Mark's example of "ends the story instead of begins it, "brings the American people together instead of divides them, etc (doesn't "but" have somewhat similar restrictions?) Finally, I think the difference in meaning between "instead of" as coordinator and "instead of" as sequence of two prepositions is due to the difference in verb form: present tense or gerund-participle and how they receive a temporal interpretation.
Joe said,
September 26, 2010 @ 8:42 am
Sorry, I didn't see GKP's comments, so that last post wasn't necessary.
Ran Ari-Gur said,
September 26, 2010 @ 10:05 am
@Pflaumbaum: Nope, I'm Israeli-American. I've lived in the Midwest since I was a baby.
Coby Lubliner said,
September 26, 2010 @ 11:27 am
Jean-Sébastien Girard: I can't think off-hand of a construction that can coordinate full infinitives in "to"
To be or not to be? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
To rent instead of to own — that is the question seems perfectly idiomatic to me, as does louer au lieu d'avoir en propriété (or however you would say it).
backofbeyond said,
September 26, 2010 @ 11:29 am
As someone who learned about perfective and imperfective aspects from studying Russian, it seems to me that a major portion of this discussion has been about the lack of recognition of the omnipresent importance of aspect in English. I had the same feeling while reading the recent spate of comments about the distinction between the gerund and the present participle verb forms.
As a former FL teacher, I was always amazed that, even at the college level, students were unable to distinguish the difference in meaning between the perfective "I go" and the imperfective "I am going", etc. I even found it useful to develop a handout contrasting aspect through the various English verb forms.
Ultimately, I have come to think that this lack of recognition of aspectual forms is another example of objects being so familiar that they are simply never consciously seen.
Pflaumbaum said,
September 26, 2010 @ 12:35 pm
@ Ran
Sorry, I meant it might conceivably be MY British ear that finds your asterisked examples natural.
Oh dear, now it sounds like I have ears of different nationalities…
marie-lucie said,
September 26, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
Coby: French for to rent instead of to own
Etre locataire plutôt que propriétaire. (lit to be a renter rather than an owner)
Coby Lubliner said,
September 26, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
Marie-Lucie: all right, this was not a good choice of an example of [Inf + instead of + Inf]. But how about "boire au lieu de manger"? It sounds perfectly idiomatic to me, and gets several dozen Google hits.
marie-lucie said,
September 26, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
Covby, "boire au lieu de manger" is perfectly fine.
As for "rent/own", the opposite of louer would rather be acheter (to buy), especially if you were talking about a car or piece of equipment rather than a house or apartment where you live on a permanent basis, and with which therefore you have a kind of relationship.