"Stopping the palace evolve"
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P.O. wrote to ask for help in analyzing this phrase from season 2, episode 5 of The Crown:
They're stopping the palace evolve
in keeping with the rest of the world.
The context is
I would recommend getting rid of an entire generation of courtier.
The old school, stuck in the past.
Ostriches with their heads buried in the sand.
They're stopping the palace evolve in keeping with the rest of the world.
In this context, stopping means "not letting", and the phrasing "They're not letting the palace evolve" would have been unproblematic, even for an American like P.O.
There are other examples Out There of "stopping NP V" meaning "not letting NP V", for example:
[link] Pretty sure there was no way of stopping him leave at the time.
[link] Zay is reeling with the thought of being away from those he loves under the scrutiny from whatever, or whomever, it is that’s stopping them escape.
[link] Laugharne pushed hard in both halves, and managed to keep the Quins quiet in the second, stopping them score any more points whilst scoring 44 points.
I'll leave it to our UK readers to explain what the regional, temporal, and sociological associations of this construction are.
jhh said,
January 12, 2026 @ 7:57 pm
I can't find an example on line, but I could swear that I heard my nephews, maybe a decade ago, talking about a new "evolve" of a Pokemon character… it meant a new, higher, evolutionary stage.
Joe said,
January 12, 2026 @ 7:58 pm
I don't speak British English but I think I've seen it much more often as "stop X Y-ing", e.g. "stopping the palace evolving", whereas Americans would add a "from" in "stop X from Y-ing".
Can you find examples in which the first verb is conjugated as "stop" instead of "stopping"? I wonder if the ear just abhors two -ing's so close together.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 12, 2026 @ 8:43 pm
This goes beyond stop but IDK how far… one certainly finds many "stop NP coming" and "prevent NP coming" and the like on e.g. BBC news. Also curious about +/- -ing…
P.O. said,
January 12, 2026 @ 9:13 pm
I’ve definitely seen the British use that omits the “from” in that kind of construction, whereas American English I think pretty strongly insists on including the “from.” But both of those constructions, in the versions I’ve seen, take -ing on the subsequent verb. So this is wholly new to me, and it sounds very awkward to my American ear.
“They're stopping the palace (from) evolving in keeping” is also very awkward, and if a student wrote that, I would tell them to recast that sentence because of the repeated -ing. But it wouldn’t sound syntactically wrong the way this British construction does to my ear.
sam said,
January 13, 2026 @ 2:11 am
Native BrEng speaker.
Versions with an object in the verb phrase ('stopping them score any more points') sound less wrong to me than versions without. Both still sound at least odd and probably erroneous, but the latter definitely stands out more.
Nathan Weston said,
January 13, 2026 @ 4:42 am
Native British English speaker — I would definitely say 'they're stopping the palace evolving' or 'they're stopping the palace from evolving'. All three of the examples you quote sounds strange to my ear (especially the rugby one for some reason).
If I wanted to use 'evolve' I would say 'they're not letting the palace evolve.'
Pedro said,
January 13, 2026 @ 5:09 am
@jhh: I've heard this too in the context of Pokémon but in fact the official terminology (shown on the cards) is "evolution", just as in standard English. This is just children tripping up over unfamiliar words. I've also heard them say "evolvation".
Back to the main problem, I agree with Nathan Weston & others that "stopping the palace evolve" definitely sounds wrong and you need "evolving" or (preferably) "from evolving".
I guess this is just a case of a slightly odd phrasing finding its way into the script and then somehow not being caught by later readers, directors etc. By the time they'd read through the script 50 times it probably sounded completely normal to everyone involved.
Kate Bunting said,
January 13, 2026 @ 5:10 am
Another native BrE speaker – I agree with Nathan. "Stopping the palace evolve" sounds decidedly odd to me.
Philip Taylor said,
January 13, 2026 @ 5:45 am
Yet another native speaker of <Br.E> — for me, "stopping the palace evolve" was immediately transparent, but what was not transparent was whether the rest of the world was similarly being stopped by something other than "an entire generation of courtier[s]". Then I read the comments, and on reading Kate's (immediately above, as I write) "stopping the palace evolve" suddenly seemed wrong. I wish I understood how I could change my perception of the phrase (from "completely acceptable and normal" to "seriously weird") in such a short space of time. The ambiguity as to whether the rest of the world is similarly being stopped remains, but on balance I am reasonably certain that is not what the author meant. For myself, I would have cast the whole thing along the following lines :
ajay said,
January 13, 2026 @ 6:44 am
Another BrE speaker agreeing with P.O. and Nathan – I agree that "stopping NP V" demands that V be a gerund (I think I mean gerund?) ending in -ing.
"The rope is stopping him falling" – correct.
"The rope is stopping him from falling" – sounds a little less usual (perhaps the AmE version as suggested) but not wrong in BrE.
"The rope is stopping him fall" – wrong.
I would also say, incidentally, that it sounds wrong to have "a generation of X" where X is singular and animate. Where it's inanimate, singular or plural both seem fine.
HMS Dreadnought made an entire generation of warship obsolete – yes.
The XBox led to a new generation of first-person shooter game – yes.
Bird flu wiped out an entire generation of woodpecker – no.
The War traumatised an entire generation of Englishman – no.
Philip Taylor said,
January 13, 2026 @ 9:05 am
For me, all four of
are wrong. All (to my mind) require the plural.
ajay said,
January 13, 2026 @ 10:03 am
Philip Taylor: interesting. But presumably you are OK with things like "type of warship", "class of warship", "category of computer game" taking the singular – it's just "generation of" that always has to take the plural?
I think that with animate things I put "generation" in the same category as "group, crowd, herd" and it takes the plural, but with inanimate things – that don't actually have literal generations – it's in the same category as "class, type, category".
JimG said,
January 13, 2026 @ 10:32 am
@ajay, "generation" COULD use a plural, but the animate/inanimate test probably doesn't hold true; Consider sheep, fish, aircraft, among other sorts of thing.
ajay said,
January 13, 2026 @ 10:57 am
JimG, I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying, because those are all words where the plural is the same as the singular.
Daniel Barkalow said,
January 13, 2026 @ 1:36 pm
I find "generation of warship" and "generation of first-person shooter" better than "generation of woodpecker", in that the first two have qualitatively different members in each generation (so they function as categories) while woodpeckers are not fit neatly into generations. I would be fine with "species of woodpecker", however.
David Marjanović said,
January 13, 2026 @ 3:42 pm
No, a later ontogenetic stage. Pokemon "evolution" is simply metamorphosis; it's something that individuals predictably undergo, not descent with heritable modification.
jaap said,
January 14, 2026 @ 4:50 am
Back on topic, "stop" is being used as a causative verb, like make/let/help etc. It does not feel wrong to me, though a bit old-fashioned and formal.
ajay said,
January 14, 2026 @ 5:31 am
The door lets you leave
The rope helps you climb
The slope makes you slide
– all correct.
But:
*The door allows you leave
*The rules permit you complain
*The rope assists you climb
*The slope compels you slide
All of the second list only work if you use the infinitive – "The door allows you to leave".
ajay said,
January 14, 2026 @ 10:20 am
the first two have qualitatively different members in each generation (so they function as categories) while woodpeckers are not fit neatly into generations.
But woodpeckers literally do have generations – they reproduce and give rise to more woodpeckers.
Philip Taylor said,
January 14, 2026 @ 11:31 am
Exactly my thoughts, Ajay — woodpeckers (etc.) have real generations; warships (etc) have entirely artificial ones. As to what "first-person shooters" are, I have absolutely no idea — those who start every sentence with "I" ?
Francisco said,
January 14, 2026 @ 12:40 pm
Philip Taylor, it's the class of computer games where the player views the world through their gunsight. There's also FPV or first-person-view drone. Are there other modern examples of grammar as metaphor?
Francisco said,
January 14, 2026 @ 2:11 pm
Returning to the original topic and asking as a member of the public with no linguistic training whatsoever, may this usage not be framed as an instance of naive generalisation?
They're helping the palace evolve in keeping with the rest of the world.
They're stopping the palace evolve in keeping with the rest of the world.*
I increasingly notice substitutions of this type in Brazilian Portuguese and on the internet, where one word in a sentence, usually a verb, is replaced by a synonym or antonym that renders the sentence unidiomatic. I've been privately referring to this as orthogonalisation. Is it a thing and does it have a proper name?
Andrew Usher said,
January 14, 2026 @ 7:06 pm
Morphological leveling?
There's no doubt this is currently perceived as a grammatical error, though, and it's hardly inevitable that it will become otherwise. One use is not enough to form an opinion.
It's true that in this sort of example American English would strongly prefer the inclusion of 'from': They're stopping the palace from evolving. But it seems that when it's a force of nature not involving human agency the 'from' is more omissible or even better omitted: They're stooping the river (from) flooding, on reflection, sounds better without.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Michael Watts said,
January 14, 2026 @ 8:08 pm
I do not agree that American English permits the omission of from in They're stopping the river from flooding.
You could omit the entire prepositional phrase, and say They're stopping the river, but that would have an entirely different meaning.
Philip Taylor said,
January 15, 2026 @ 2:57 am
I have, of course, no awareness of what American English does or does not permit, but augmenting "They're stopping the river flooding" to read "They're stopping the river flooding the fields" would feel fine to this Briton, although in writing (but perhaps not in speech) I would add the "from".
ajay said,
January 15, 2026 @ 7:45 am
Are there other modern examples of grammar as metaphor?
Very interesting question. Objectification would count, I think – someone who is objectified is deprived of agency, so they are only the grammatical object of a verb, not the subject. And possibly subjectivity, where what the thing is depends on the person who sees the thing, the subject of the verb "sees".
ajay said,
January 15, 2026 @ 7:54 am
There are also third-person shooters, in which the view on the screen is not as if through the eyes of the character that the player controls, but as if from an elevated camera behind and above the character – you're basically following your character along as he or she runs around. If you want to get an idea of the difference, you can look up clips of gameplay on YouTube and other similar sources. "Halo" is a famous first-person shooter, and "Tomb Raider" a famous third-person shooter.
I am not aware of any second-person shooter games. Presumably this would mean that the view on the screen was through the eyes of the people that your character was shooting. It sounds like an interesting if impractical approach.
I note that "fourth person" is defined as "A variety of the third person sometimes used for indefinite referents, such as one, as in one shouldn't do that" and it strikes me that this would be a better name for third-person shooters. After all, your view as the player isn't that of any particular person; in the story of the game "Tomb Raider", there is no actual character that flies around following Lara Croft just behind and above her head.
Philip Taylor said,
January 15, 2026 @ 8:53 am
A naïve question from someone who has only ever played "go" and "chess" on a computer — approximately what fraction of modern conputer- (or console-) based games involve shooting (presumably at people, but I am more than willing to stand corrected on that point) ?
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
January 15, 2026 @ 9:51 am
Father of 3 teenagers here, and therefore qualified to answer Philip's question: About 40%, with maybe another 10-15% involving running down people with motor vehicles.
Philip Taylor said,
January 15, 2026 @ 10:20 am
Hmmm. What a shame this is a linguistics forum, otherwise I might ask "and what do those statistics tell us about the society in which we live ?".
Rodger C said,
January 15, 2026 @ 10:21 am
Are there other modern examples of grammar as metaphor?
Cf. John Crowley, "The war between the Objects and the Subjects," in Novelties & Souvenirs.
ajay said,
January 15, 2026 @ 11:57 am
"and what do those statistics tell us about the society in which we live ?"
That it's one of the least violent societies ever to exist in the entire history of humanity? But I don't think the two have anything to do with each other. Chess is also an extremely violent game – it's a pre-modern battle simulation – but ancient Persia and China were brutal societies.
Philip Taylor said,
January 15, 2026 @ 12:07 pm
OK, "checkmate" was once شاه ماتا (šāh māta, "the king is dead"), but I'm not looking down the barrel of a gun when I try to kill him, merely endeavouring to manœuvre him into a position where I could kill him if I were so inclined …
Lynne Murphy said,
January 15, 2026 @ 1:44 pm
Any chance that we could interpret _evolve_ as a noun here? BrE does like to noun verbs…
Michael Watts said,
January 15, 2026 @ 5:50 pm
My sense is that objectification draws a contrast between an "object" and a "person", not one between an "object" and a "subject".
Michael Watts said,
January 15, 2026 @ 6:06 pm
As to the prevalence of shooters, of the 10 current "most played games" on Steam, the shooters are Counter-Strike 2, ARC Raiders, Rust, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Marvel Rivals, and Warframe. Dota 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 are combat-focused, but aren't shooters. Geometry Dash is a platformer. Bongo Cat appears to be more of an art piece than a game.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is a shooter, the one alluded to by Benjamin Orsatti with a focus on running people down in cars, and may or may not qualify as "top 10" on that list. Rank 4 is not a game, but its description indicates that it is software used by a mod for Grand Theft Auto 5.
Shooters are popular, presumably for the same reason that play weapons are popular.
Haamu said,
January 15, 2026 @ 6:24 pm
Second-person perspective may not be practical for shooters, but it has been of critical importance in another category of computer game (games?), going back at least to the 1970s: “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”
Andrew Usher said,
January 15, 2026 @ 6:37 pm
That's grammatically second person, but still first-person perspective: you are 'seeing' the game world through the perspective of your character, and the pronoun choice is forced by the language when verbal descriptions are used for that purpose.
In general, first- and third-person perspective, as concepts, are familiar in video games and hardly need explanation; they might seem like a metaphor today but are taken from the literary styles where they literally describe the pronouns that are used, so not metaphorical in origin.
As for video games being centered on killing people (or creatures), I consider that not a reflection of our culture being violent or otherwise, but simply of what makes a good game. Games that rely heavily on the reflexes are fun to play for many people, and the way to do that and still have a well-developed game world is to simulate some sort of combat.
JPL said,
January 16, 2026 @ 12:35 am
It looks like most BE speakers regard the sentence "They're stopping the palace evolve in keeping with the rest of the world." as being not grammatically acceptable, but the character in the film seems to pronounce it with the utmost confidence (and all the authority of the know-it-all mansplainer). It seems like the uninflected form of the verb in this construction is attested, but nobody has said this usage is associated with a particular regional or social variety. So what's going on?
The sentence is odd also because of its ambiguity, as Philip observed: does the "in keeping with" phrase modify "stopping" or "evolve" ("In keeping with the rest of the world, they're stopping the palace evolve" vs ""They're stopping the palace evolve in its keeping up with the rest of the world"). (If you don't put "up" you'll get an ambiguous sentence again.)
Lynne Murphy asks, in effect, if "evolve" here could be functioning as a nominal. But if that were the case, "palace" would have to have a genitive marker (as in "stopping the palace's evolution"); substituting a pronoun that makes case distinctions here shows that this nominal position is expressed rather with the accusative. E.g., 'reveal' is one of those verbs that has been nominalized by zero derivation. You could say, "They're stopping the show (from) revealing the truth", and "They're stopping the show's reveal of the truth", but not, "They're stopping the show reveal the truth". In any case, it's the function of the word in that syntactic context that we're worried about, so the question is, is that context verbal or nominal?
Something that is interesting about this example is that it shows again the importance of the source-goal schema in ordering the understanding of relations (in both senses of that expression). "To" indicates that the verbal element describes the goal in the relation referred to, while "from" indicates the source term. The application of this schema is indicated in logic and mathematics in the use of the notion of function, as a dependency relation between domain and codomain. Apparently in English the use of 'from' indicates that the varying element (the one normally described by a verb) does not get out of the domain, so to speak. So the contrast between "from" and "to" in these (I guess) verbal complements is between the "promote'", or "make possible" ("to"), and the "constraint" (from") type of causal relation. The verbal term to which "to" is preposed can be marked for the main aspectual values (of "perfective" (unmarked), imperfective and perfect), while the verbal term to which "from" is preposed can only have an aspectual value of "imperfective" ("-ing"). The idea would be that at the point of the "stopping", the situation referred to by "evolving" is at least not complete (i.e., it's "inside" the situation). (Is "We need to stop him from having finished all the food by the time we get there" a possible sentence? (But still it has "having", not "have"). So what about the sentences in which the main verb expresses constraint and you only have the verbal element in the complement in the uninflected form? (Some frequently used verbs expressing the "promote" relation are OK without the "to".) Does 'stop' join the small set of verbs that allow the omission of the preposition, with the "promote/constrain" relation only implied by the verbal meaning? Is there something about the constraint relation, or is that position in the syntactic schema nominal? Does the oddity of this attested, but not widely accepted construction have anything to do with the interaction between the source-goal schema and aspect? (The stem form of the verb, in expressing "perfective" aspectual value, describes a situation as a whole, and this would be counter to the notion of "stopping" it.) I don't know. What does the CGEL have to say about it?
ajay said,
January 16, 2026 @ 4:42 am
Lynne Murphy asks, in effect, if "evolve" here could be functioning as a nominal. But if that were the case, "palace" would have to have a genitive marker
Not necessarily – "palace" could be operating as an adjective, modifying the noun "evolve".
We can substitute another noun to make it clear: he's stopping the reception. Which reception is he stopping? He's stopping the palace reception.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
January 16, 2026 @ 8:43 am
(for Philip and Ajay):
"Would that evil men did not abound, and then evils would not abound. Bad times! Troublesome times! This, men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times."
St. Aug., Serm. XXX.
Philip Taylor said,
January 16, 2026 @ 12:18 pm
I was unsure whether I was interpreting St Augustine's words correctly, so I asked ChatGPT for its assistance : despite my many misgivings concerning generative AI, I think it did a pretty good job —
The passage you quote from St. Augustine (Sermon XXX) is a compact but powerful statement of his moral and theological view of history and society.
Here is what Augustine is saying, step by step, in more modern terms.
1. “Would that evil men did not abound, and then evils would not abound.”
Augustine begins by rejecting a passive explanation of social decay.
Evils in society are not abstract forces that mysteriously descend upon us; they arise because evil people are numerous.
In other words:
Social evils are the consequence of moral failure in persons.
If people were morally good, the evils they produce would largely disappear.
This already reflects a core Augustinian belief: evil is not a substance, but the result of disordered human will.
2. “Bad times! Troublesome times! This, men are saying.”
Here Augustine quotes what people commonly complain about in every age:
“These are terrible times.”
This is deliberately ironic. Augustine lived through political collapse, war, and social upheaval, yet he recognises that every generation believes its own age is uniquely bad.
3. “Let our lives be good; and the times are good.”
This is the turning point of the sermon.
Augustine reverses the usual logic:
People blame the times for their behaviour.
Augustine says: your behaviour is what makes the times what they are.
Goodness is not something we wait for society to provide.
It is something we must be, first.
4. “We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”
This is the heart of the passage and the line most often quoted.
Augustine is asserting:
History is morally shaped from the inside out.
The “character” of an age is nothing more than the collective character of its people.
So:
Corrupt people produce corrupt times.
Just people produce just times.
Complaining about the age while living badly is self-deception.
This fits perfectly with Augustine’s wider theology:
The City of Man reflects human self-love and disorder.
The City of God is built wherever people live rightly, regardless of external circumstances.
5. Why this mattered in Augustine’s world
Augustine preached during the decline of the Roman Empire. Many blamed:
barbarian invasions,
political instability,
or the abandonment of traditional Roman religion.
Augustine’s response is radical:
The problem is not Rome’s enemies, nor fate, nor even history — it is us.
6. Why it still resonates today
The passage feels modern because it attacks a timeless habit:
blaming society, politics, culture, or “the age we live in”
while ignoring personal moral responsibility
Augustine is saying:
Do not ask whether the times are bad. Ask whether you are good.
In one sentence
Augustine’s message is this:
The moral quality of an age is not something we suffer; it is something we create.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
January 16, 2026 @ 1:15 pm
Yuck. I hate that the above was a product of AI, but, yeah, that's about the long and short of it.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 16, 2026 @ 3:06 pm
Apropos "stop X coming" etc., Chatgpt claims that in Br.Eng. news etc., stop/prevent are fairly common with NP + VERBing, hinder/deter/discourage are rare/informal in such frames, and ban/prohibit/forbid are still rarer or maybe unattested. FWIW it is easy to find all the above verbs used sans “from” among the online hoi polloi — but having looked at a few I’m afraid I no longer have any idea what is or isn’t legit in my Am.Eng. Surely "ban/deter them coming" is totally wrong? But "forbid them coming"? IDK, seems OK
JPL said,
January 16, 2026 @ 6:15 pm
@ajay:
But we're talking about cases where, in the situation being described, the referent of "palace" is the actor in the process described as "evolution" and expressed with what could be either a verbal form or a nominal form ("evolve"). The question "which is it?" is, I would say, so far unresolved. (In your example, the word "palace" is functioning as a nominal modifier of "reception", in what is called the "classifier" position of the schema for nominal modification. ("The big royal palace reception.", as opposed to the wedding reception.))
Andrew Usher said,
January 16, 2026 @ 10:32 pm
The problem with ajay's analysis, which is otherwise sound, is that 'evolve' simply isn't a noun in any kind of standard English. 'Evolution' or 'evolving' (much better in this case) are, and would have been expected, and in that case we wouldn't have a discussion here.
The fact that what follows 'stop' or a similar verb is often seen as a nominal compound is true enough, and my example of "stopping the river flooding" (and others I thought of where omission of 'from' sounds OK) can be seen as such – "the river's flooding' being the thing being stopped. Here it's "the palace's evolution/evolving" and that's equally good (though 'in keeping with' in this context is probably British).
The use of 'evolve' instead must have been a mistake, as no one seems to find that acceptable; whether that's less noticeable in British than in American English (fundamentally the question here) I can't answer.
JPL said,
January 18, 2026 @ 1:42 am
Like in the murder mysteries, there is an important bit of information here that we still don't have: any examples where the main clause verb can be in any form other than "stopping", like "stop" or "stopped".
Andrew Usher said,
January 18, 2026 @ 7:17 pm
I'm not sure what's so important about that part. I'd assume that it doesn't matter, as it grammatically shouldn't. Without any other evidence (and if this is a rare error as it seems that might be hard to find) one would assume that all forms of 'stop' (and presumably other verbs of that class) would license it equally (or not).
JPL said,
January 19, 2026 @ 2:17 am
Andrew:
It's part of the puzzle that presumably the well-educated author of the line was confident enough of the propriety of the sentence that he could have such a proper mansplainer of a character deliver it with such authority; plus the attested examples. The fact that our linguistically aware commenters judge it to be not good in their own experience is also part of the puzzle, but I think it would be premature to judge it as ungrammatical or an error for all regional, social or historical varieties. So I'm not satisfied by that explanation. If it makes sense within some norm of usage, I want to know what is the sense that it makes.
(There's also the puzzle of "They're stopping the palace from evolving", but, "They're allowing the palace to be evolving" (and I think, "They're letting the palace be evolving over time" would be OK.). No "be" with the "from" type, yes "be" with "to". (Don't give me, "They're stopping the palace from being an evolving institution.".) What am I missing?)
ajay said,
January 19, 2026 @ 7:08 am
It's part of the puzzle that presumably the well-educated author of the line was confident enough of the propriety of the sentence that he could have such a proper mansplainer of a character deliver it with such authority
Far more likely, I think, that he wrote something slightly different in the script (like instead of "stopping" he wrote "not letting"), the actor misspoke, and no one noticed – or if they noticed they didn't think it was important enough to reshoot.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 19, 2026 @ 6:34 pm
Philip Taylor found this line fine at first blush. And it is easy to find e.g. "stop NP come" among UK netizens —
"refs need to stamp it out and quickly otherwise everyone will be grabbing keepers and stopping them come for crosses"
"it suggests the containers have shifted in the draw stopping them come free"
"how ever if the holiday was planned for your partners parenting time and was booked to include his kids and she is stopping them come thats on her"
"respiratory tract infections […] recur regularly and there isnt any way of stopping them come back"
"strategically it makes sense to expand and bring peace and prosperity to neighbours, stopping them come under the thumb of authoritarians"
etc. etc.
JPL said,
January 19, 2026 @ 7:56 pm
Jonathan:
So the line in question from the video is probably not a mistake, and that usage is normal for some group of people, as yet not identified. Also the interpretation of "evolve' as nominal in function is not looking good right now, since corresponding elements like "come" in the first example, are clearly verbal. But what we still don't have is an example where the superordinate clause verb is in any form other than "stopping" (with "-ing" suffix), as in, "Smith grabbed the keeper and stopped him come for the cross", (where "coming" would be OK).
Jonathan Smith said,
January 19, 2026 @ 10:04 pm
@JPL Yes I should have written "stopping" — my search was for "stopping them come".
Maybe a co-occurrence restriction on -ing somewhere in the "constraint ranking" if you will…?
RfP said,
January 19, 2026 @ 10:53 pm
I'm not sure why people are basing their evaluation on current-day syntax.
Other than jaap, that is, who said, "It does not feel wrong to me, though a bit old-fashioned and formal."
Which sounds like an important distinction to make, since the episode is set in 1958 (old-fashioned), and the utterer is an aristocrat speaking deferentially to the reigning monarch (formal).
I watched the whole episode just now—the line in question appears at 45:37—and this usage seems completely in line with a character who has called his sovereign "priggish" and "tweedy."
Folks sure did talk funny, back in the olden days!
RfP said,
January 19, 2026 @ 10:56 pm
*1956