Timeline for answer to How to parse 'do more harm than good'? by CJ Dennis
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:46 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:34 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @CJDennis Never heard anyone say that nor can I find an example of it on the first (or second) page of Google search. What comes up are references to "do more harm than good" which is the idiom that is listed (as an idiom) in multiple dictionaries. It seems like a mild malapropism. The typical phrasing being "no good will come ...". | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:29 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @JimmyJames in your opinion does "more harm than good will come" (which can't have "do" added to it) mean something different from "to do more harm than good"? | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:19 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @CJDennis A good demonstration of the error here is that would could that the sentence "Their estimates completely missed the mark." and replace "the mark" with something like "the train". While it's correct that "mark" is a noun within the idiom, it doesn't really help to understand the meaning of the phrase as it relates to the whole sentence. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:15 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @JimmyJames I don't think our answers need to agree with each other. More harm than good will come of us continuing to discuss this. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 22:07 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @CJDennis Already did last week. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 21:54 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @JimmyJames If you feel you have a better answer, feel free to post it. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 21:51 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @CJDennis The problem is that you are splitting the idiom up in order to do your 'duck typing'. The idiom is not just "more harm than good", it's "do/does more harm than good". Your substitution would then be "hasty legislation [stuff]" or "hasty legislation [things]" which doesn't really work. | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 21:45 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @JimmyJames see linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/35043/3571 | |
| Feb 3, 2020 at 21:42 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @listeneva What I'm saying is this answer is treating this as the wrong part of speech. I'm not sure how much more evidence I can provide for that. | |
| Feb 1, 2020 at 2:12 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @listeneva I used to do that too. I'd wonder why you'd have both a grammar tree and a semantic tree for the same sentence, which were usually different. Surely you could combine them into one, right? No, I was wrong! As you say, syntax and semantics are different and should be treated differently! | |
| Feb 1, 2020 at 2:08 | comment | added | listeneva | @JimmyJames You're conflating and confusing syntax and semantics. Just because one expression means another doesn't mean the two expressions are syntactically identical. For example, "I kill people" means "I'm a killer", but that doesn't mean "kill" is not a verb. | |
| Jan 31, 2020 at 16:10 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @listeneva In other words, 'does' is not a verb here. It's inherently part of the expression. If you search for 'more harm than good', you will get a bunch of dictionary entries that all contain 'does' or 'do'. Another similar phrase is 'does a [something] good' e.g. there is an old dairy advertisement "milk. it does a body good". 'a body good' is not meaningful on it's own and it's not really something you 'do' in the verb sense of 'do'. It means: "milk is good for you". It's a description, not an action. | |
| Jan 31, 2020 at 15:53 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @listeneva Trying to slice off the does as separate from the phrase 'more harm than good' is the issue here. As I was thinking about this, I realized that the mostr straightforward meaning of 'does more harm than good' is basically: 'is harmful' which I don't think qualifies as a noun phrase. | |
| Jan 31, 2020 at 0:20 | comment | added | listeneva | @JimmyJames In Following a keto diet does things to your body, to your body is not complement but adjunct of the verb does. Thus, it's still grammatical without the adjunct. You can say Following a keto diet does more harm than good to your body with or without to your body. So, yes, more harm than good corresponds to things. | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 17:29 | comment | added | JimmyJames | @HelloGoodbye Presumably you are responding to me. "Following a keto diet does things" is not really grammatical. You could say "following a keto diet does things to your body". Maybe a better example would be "exercise does things". Exercise doesn't do anything, it's the thing you do. But I can say "Exercise does more harm than good" "Does more harm than good" is the atomic language element. This is why the phrase in the Oxford dictionary includes 'does' or 'do' and isn't just "more harm than good" | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 17:04 | comment | added | Hello Goodbye | Those sound fine to me; although they really don’t carry any meaning, they’re still grammatical. | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 16:02 | comment | added | JimmyJames | I'm not sure this works in general. Take the sentence "Following a keto diet does more harm than good." It's perfectly logical and meaningful. "Following a keto diet does things", not so much. Or "Ethanol in gasoline does more harm than good" versus "Ethanol in gasoline does stuff". These are awkward constructions at best. | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 11:21 | vote | accept | listeneva | ||
| Jan 30, 2020 at 11:18 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | @listeneva I see where you're coming from, but I believe that repeating the verb (with a pronoun referent subject) changes the grammar (but not the meaning) of the sentence. Note you could also say "hasty legislation does more harm than hasty legislation does good" but it's starting to get really cumbersome. | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 11:14 | comment | added | listeneva | +1 for directly answering my question. Now, can the sentence be expanded like this: hasty legislation does more harm than it does good? If it can, I believe more harm than it does good cannot be an NP, and that neither can more harm than good. Any thoughts? | |
| Jan 30, 2020 at 10:47 | history | answered | CJ Dennis | CC BY-SA 4.0 |