Guest writer

Betty is easy

Careful with that grammar, now

Have a gander at these two sentences.

Betty is eager to please. Betty is easy to please.

Now, at first glance, I think most of us’d be willing to bet that these two sentences function in exactly the same way grammatically. They consist of the same words (with one exception) in exactly the same positions. And the words that differ are so alike. They’re both adjectives. They’re in the same positions in their respective sentences. They’re both preceded by “is” and followed by “to.”

But look carefully.

Parse the first sentence. What’s the verb? “Is.” Who or what is? “Betty.” Betty is what? “Eager.” Eager in what manner? “Eager to please.”

We have, in this order, a subject, a verb, a subject complement, and an infinitive phrase functioning adverbially to give information about the adjective “eager.”

Now parse the second sentence. What’s the verb? “Is.” Who or what is? “Betty.” Betty is what? “Easy.”

Whoa, boy! Betty is easy! Don’tcha be saying things like that about Betty. You don’t even know her.

Let’s back up. Clearly the sentence is saying something else. Let’s ask another question.

What is easy? To please Betty is easy. So the subject is “To please Betty.” Infinitive phrases are famous for being able to function as subjects. To err is human; to forgive, divine.

But how did the syntax get so busted up? It’s courtesy of something called extraposing. All in the world that you do when you extrapose is move an infinitive or gerund phrase or a noun clause from subject position to the end of the sentence and replace it with “It” (To err is human: It’s human to err. Selling seashells by the seashore is fun; it’s fun selling seashells by the seashore. That Bill loves Mary’s obvious; it’s obvious that Bill loves Mary.)

In the course of a day, America extraposes as many clauses and phrases to the backs of sentences as Carter has little liver pills, as my grandmother used to say.

But notice that, in the sentence with which I started all this palaver about extraposition, something weird has happened. We don’t have “It is easy to please Betty.” We have Betty is easy to please! It turns out that sometimes an element of an extraposed clause or phrase can rise, if not from the dead, at least from the back of the sentence. And so has “Betty” done here. She may have to be the object of “to please,” but that doesn’t mean she can’t go to the front of the sentence, if she pleases.

It pleases Betty to go to the front of the sentence “Betty is easy to please.”

When a portion of an extraposed clause moves to the front of the sentence, it gets a merit badge. It has become a “raised element.” The linguistic transformation that makes this possible is abbreviated T-Raised/Ex, although my classmates and I came to refer to it-when we took Advanced Grammar with Dr. Susan Wink-as T-R/Ex. In writing out this transformation on exams, whenever a student came to one of these, he’d begin to stomp his feet real hard, causing glasses and coffee cups to rattle about in the room.

Betty Is Easy To Please

For Dr. Susan Wink, transformational grammarian par excellence

In Betty is easy to please,

The subject is really not Betty,

Although one might be very ready

To say so. But, ah what a tease

Is Betty is easy to please!

The subject, in fact, is a phrase

Of verbal proportions. The ways

Of infinitives are no breeze.

This one, for example, is part

Of a unit that ups and claims Betty

As object. O, don’t think me petty

For parsing. It’s dear to my heart.

What’s easy? Why, just to please Betty.

Capisci? Yes, I figured you did.

And yet I can see what I’ve said

Has left you a little bit fretty.

You don’t understand why it is

That Betty has gone to the front.

Bear with me. It’s not time to punt.

We’re starting to get down to biz.

If you start with To please Betty’s easy

And then do what’s called extrapose

(One really must keep on one’s toes!)

You bring in an it at the entry

And send to the back of the clause

To please Betty. Presto! Voilà!

(Did I hear someone saying, “Blah, blah”?)

But wait! One thing must give us pause.

We’re still not quite where we began.

We must get dear Betty up front.

Once we have done that we can punt.

I think that-I know that-we can.

The linguists call this movement raising.

As soon as it’s done we are through,

Can go out and have us a brew.

We’ll be done with our clausing and phrasing.

The name of this sleek transformation

That busts up the wee verbal phrase

Is T-Raised/Extra. It plays

The dickens with subordination.

It lets direct objects come first.

O, how it does thunder and snort!

We call the thing T-Rex for short.

It may be the absolute worst

For breaking up syntactic clusters,

But, mercy, that son of a gun

Is barrels of linguistic fun.

We just love the way T-Rex blusters!

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Johnny Wink, the son of a sailor man, has been for many moons a teacher of English and Latin at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.

Editorial, Pages 11 on 01/27/2014

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