Stretch Yourself!
This month’s workout, “Grammar, Part 1,” is taken from CMOS 17, paragraphs 5.1–20. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study that section of the Manual before answering the questions.
Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)
Note: Dictionaries and style guides sometimes disagree. These questions are designed to test knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style, which prefers Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition. Other style guides may follow a different dictionary.
[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]
Chicago Style Workout 27: Grammar, Part 1
Photo: War Game Drill on Seattle [ca. 1910–1915], from the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress on Flickr.
I take exception to the answer for 4. Most English nouns may refer to either sex: True. (“English nouns have no true gender, as that property is understood in many other languages. Most English nouns may refer to either sex.”) I said the answer was false because English nouns are genderless—therefore, there is no sex to which they can refer. To say that the answer is true is to say that there IS a gender, which is not the case . . .
“He had me go to the store.” “Me” is the thematic and morphological object of “have,” and “me” is the thematic subject of the bare infinitive “go.” Case is not merely morphological; it is also syntactic and semantic (thematic). Infinitives often/usually have a subject in the oblique case: time for us to go, make them see, see her run, etc. Ir did you think, erroneously, infinitives can’t have subjects?