Seem similar enough, right? From the looks of it, the sentences appear to have the same structure, with one adjective replaced for another.
So how come the first one refers to someone pleasing John, but the second one refers to John pleasing someone?
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.
Because language does funny things like that?
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"A period"
~~This is what I like to add to the end of almost every sentence.~~
It has to do with uh...objects?...well I don't know the technical terms for it, but if you compare these sentences:
"John is easily pleased." vs. "John is eagerly pleased."
Well, you see where I'm going with this. In fact, I don't even the second sentence can exist grammatically.
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Smithy/Freepizza/Heydude/Monty/Shadowspy
The second one can if he's between the ages of 16 and 37.
But yeah; without doing any research I'd imagine it's because a medieval English construction was trying to conform to a Latin usage that was impersonal (as Latin doesn't have a word for "I enjoy"; you're left with "that pleases me" or "I have joy from that thing"). In Germanic languages you have a much more direct "I like that." So the original usage persisted, along with a Latinish Frenchish usage.
But again I haven't done any of the required research to arrive at this point.
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Smithy's on the right track. Don't be thrown off track, Wil, by the verb "please." While the alternation is constrained to certain types of verbs, "please" was just arbitrarily chosen (cf. "Lions are easy to kill" vs. "Lions are eager to kill").
(Also, there's more to linguistics than historical linguistics.)
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.
Pfft.
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But yeah; without doing any research I'd imagine it's because a medieval English construction was trying to conform to a Latin usage that was impersonal (as Latin doesn't have a word for "I enjoy"; you're left with "that pleases me" or "I have joy from that thing"). In Germanic languages you have a much more direct "I like that." So the original usage persisted, along with a Latinish Frenchish usage.
Everything looks like a nail, doesn't it?
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Shake your windows and rattle your walls.
See, now, I feel properly zinged.
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Okay, I'm sufficiently shamed in my ignorance: point me toward a good introductory linguistics textbook.
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(And in fairness there *is* an impersonal use of "like" that persists up through early modern English)
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Although it's probably well below your level, you might like:
http://www.amazon.com/Students-Introduction-English-Grammar/dp/0521612888
I know no linguistics at all and hence I got a lot out of it. If I had my copy with me here at the University of Minnesota, I might've even been able to answer AMan's riddle. :(
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"If I pick nine, you'd better not be racist against me!"
"No promises, niney."
For syntax (which is what this topic is about) I'd recommend the online textbook out of Penn.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.
In the first case, it's a reflexive verb, and in the second, it's not. You have to understand the adjectives in this case because there are no words that show you the reflexion. In the first case, the subject is impersonal and the verb applies to a specific object and in the second sentence, it's vice versa.
In Spanish this would not need any explanation, as reflexive verbs require different sentence construction.
How is the verb in the first sentence reflexive if John is not pleasing himself?
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Seth: What are you making?
Evan: I'm just drilling holes. Last two weeks, **** it.
Oh, the internet. That's much more convenient.
Why is every awesome online academic resource marred with horrible mid 90s frames?
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Hm, maybe I have a poor understanding of "reflexive". I'm not going to take any more questions :)
Also, I posted some legit questions in your "ask me anything" topic about linguistics and you never answered!