Linguistic Jewels Abound

This morning, I wandered over the my piece of real estate at NaBloPoMo and found that someone had left a comment with a link to her site. As I was reading her information, I found that she'd posted an interesting question, one I've never been able to answer as well as I'd like. Essentially, her question was this: how does one explain the appropriate usage of "bring" and "take" to people who apparently did not have that usage implanted in their genes by their English-teacher mother?

I decided to take on the challenge. In no time, I had found the answer, and it was presented so well by John Lawler, a cunning linguist from the University of Michigan that I thought I would leave it virtually intact for you to read here:

...bring and take are semantically derived verbs; that is, their meaning and use depends on some other verbs and their meaning and use, the way kill depends on on the meaning of die and dead, or sell depends on possess and give.

In this case, the basic verbs are come and go, respectively. That is, bring is the causative transitive form of come, and take is the causative transitive form of go. Test: find a normal use of take and substitute cause to go or some other causative phrase (e.g, make __ go) and see if it means the same thing; ditto bring and come.

I took the garbage out. = I caused the garbage to go out.
I brought the paper in. = I caused the paper to come in.

After looking at Lawler's strutting posts and his strident comments about how disturbed he is that English speakers do not understand their language better, I've decided that most of what he has written is as self-serving as it is informative. His ego is bigger than a breadbox, to be sure. But, the information he presents is valuable, so I'll forgive him for being a self-congratulatory pedant.

Here's a link to his diatribe on bring/take and here is a link to to some interesting FAQs on English grammar.