Abstract
The trouble with some textbooks offering guidance on grammar and expression is that they wallow – not without a self-imposed touch of irony – in lexical quagmires. A quick visit to the shelves of my own study demonstrates the point:
One manual identifies certain ‘inducements to inversion in the syntactic form as in the paratactic’.
‘It is sometimes maintained,’ says another, ‘that the Cognate Object is adverbial in force, and therefore should be classed with the Adverbial Accusative.’
I must confess to finding a certain perverse pleasure in interpreting such opaqueness; there is something deliciously indulgent about sloshing through the sticky syntax. Other searchers for advice, I further confess, are not necessarily so disposed. They want authority of opinion, free of technicalities, delivered in a painless and undemanding fashion.