Well, here I am once again to somehow illustrate some of the quirkiest English quirks. This time I will tell you about one of the funniest collocations of all : verbs that can grammatically collocate with their nouns. This structure is not English-specific and, in fact, it exists in many languages, including Latin Let's see this with examples :
The verb 'live' in English is intransitive and, thus, it can't take a direct object. However, that is not completely true given that it becomes transitive when it's followed by its noun. You can perfectly say : I'm living my life. This is partly due to a process called conversion, about which I will speak in a future entry.
There are other similar examples in English, both with transitive and intransitive verbs:
- Think lovely thoughts
- Dream bad dreams
- Sing a song
- Drink a soft drink
- See the sights
- Tell a tale
- Find some incredible findings
- Feel a nasty feeling
- Give a gift
- Do a horrible deed
- Pay my payments
- Fish a fish
- I believe my belief
- Film a film
- Record a recording
- Fight a dangerous fight
- Sit on that seat/sit
- Face my face
- Celebrate a celebration
- Sign a signature card
- Shoot my shot (let go of my pride)
- Build a building
- Save some savings
- Perform a performance
- There's an old saying that says...
- They are studying a study conducted by an American university.
Well, as you can say, despite of the fact that I've been writing this blog for two years now, English is so hilariously funny that there are always new quirks to discover ! If you want, you can contribute with more examples to my list.
See you next week with the two-year blog's anniversary !
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