Language Repair Woman.

[sister_luck]

I'm in marking hell again where I'll spend the rest of the weekend.

Again, I find myself in the face of odd linguistic choices and I'd like your input on them. Sometimes these are genuine grammar issues, but most often it's about the subtleties of usage.

The following sentences all somehow rub me the wrong way and in some cases I know where the mistake is, but haven't got a clue how to fix them.



Is this an alternative construction to "frightened of dying"?
Mary is frightened to die now.

Can a person be sinful or is it that a person is guilty of sinful acts? Is there an adjective that would describe this person?

Then there's the use of the reflexive pronoun with confess but as that's in the source text I'll accept it as old-fashioned language.

How would you fix he thinks terrible about himself? I've offered he thinks badly of himself, but is there any way to keep terrible?

Does he needs her forgiveness to have a cause to live on make any sense to you? I've got major problems with live on in the sense of keep living. Does "to have a reason to stay alive" make more sense?

I don't like she makes him clear that... - it sounds terribly German. Is she makes it clear to him that... a better-sounding replacement?

How would you put she searches the fault by herself in idiomatic English?

And lastly, something religious: Are "she repents of her sins" and "she repents her sins" both good English?

Thanks and bonus points for finding out which play my students had to discuss!

Comments

[gillo]

Is this an alternative construction to "frightened of dying"?
Mary is frightened to die now.

I don't think I would use an infinitive after "frightened" in this context, though I couldn't say why - "frightened to jump" works perfectly well.

Can a person be

sinful

or is it that a person is guilty of sinful acts? Is there an adjective that would describe this person?

I'd say a person can be sinful in a fairly archaic piece. Or an excessively religious piece.

How would you fix he thinks terrible about himself? I've offered he thinks badly of himself, but is there any way to keep terrible?

"He sees himself as a terrible person"? You can't use an adjective as an adverb, which is what it seems your student is trying to do.

Actually, this may also be a varieties of English issue - "He thinks badly of himself" rings very American to me.

Does he needs her forgiveness to have a cause to live on make any sense to you? I've got major problems with live on in the sense of keep living. Does "to have a reason to stay alive" make more sense?

I don't have a problem with "to live on", but "reason" makes sense where "cause" doesn't.

I don't like she makes him clear that... - it sounds terribly German. Is she makes it clear to him that... a better-sounding replacement?

Definitely. "makes him clear that" is not an English construction.

How would you put she searches the fault by herself in idiomatic English?

Hmm. Tricky because it could have more than one shade of meaning. Do you mean "She searches for the fault in herself", or "She seeks the fault on her own initiative" or "she looks for the fault without help from others"?

And lastly, something religious: Are "she repents of her sins" and "she repents her sins" both good English?

I'd accept both, though the second sounds slightly better to me.

Is it

The Crucible

?

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much and congratulations! You are right, it is The Crucible.

I think the fault example is so tricky a) because of the wrong preposition and b) because the student actually means blame.

Gah, that's the hardest part - spotting the mistakes is okay, but finding out what the student actually wanted to say and then 'fixing' the sentence without completely re-writing it, that's the time-consuming part.