| 词组 | look |
| 释义 | look 1. Perrin & Ebbitt 1972 and Longman 1984 note that when look is used as an intransitive verb in the sense of "use one's eyes" it may be qualified by an adverb of manner: "look carefully," "look longingly." But when it functions as a linking verb, approximately equivalent to appear or seem, it takes an adjective: "You look beautiful," "You look tired." This is the modern analysis, and it dates from about the time of Alford 1866. But the OED shows that look in the latter meaning was formerly felt to be an intransitive and not a linking verb, and was usually qualified by an adverb of manner. Shirley Brice Heath in Shopen & Williams 1980 mentions an 1829 grammar that lists look beautiful as a "blunder." Old examples with the adverb are not especially hard to find: • ... my Lord Sandwich, who is in his gold-buttoned suit, as the mode is, and looks nobly —Samuel Pepys, diary, 17 June 1663 • ... why you look more comically than an old-fashion'd Fellow —Thomas Shadwell, The Sullen Lovers, 1668 • The beauty remarks how frightfully she looks — Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 193 (in Hall 1873) • ... holds a great deal commodiously without looking awkwardly —Jane Austen, letter, 8 Nov. 1800 • She has got her new teeth in, and I think they look very nicely —Emily Dickinson, letter, 20 June 1852 Here we have an instance where the general perception of how the verb functions has changed over the years. And what is true of look in this respect is also true of other verbs, such as taste, feel, act, smell, now treated as linking verbs. These verbs are not yet fully settled into their linking-verb roles, as occasional citations with adverbs of manner attest. Here are a couple: • ... everything was ashes. Even her cigarette tasted bitterly —Charles G. Norris, Zelda Marsh, 1927 • Abdullah wrinkled the edge of his flat nose and shook his head. They really smelled abominably — Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, 1935 The OED notes that because the grammarians have insisted on the use of the adjective and condemned the adverb, the adverb of manner is rarely seen, unless it is well, ill, or badly. The first two are acceptable, of course, because they are adjectives as well as adverbs. • "My house looks well, doesn't it?" he demanded — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925 But you had better stick to adjectives. The occasional adverb of manner is beginning to look like some sort of hypercorrection, as indeed the passage just quoted from Fitzgerald does. 2. We have had a couple of inquiries in recent years about the propriety of looking to followed by an infinitive, and James J. Kilpatrick in a 1985 syndicated column recorded a correspondent's complaint about the same construction. Here is a typical example: • I'm not looking to set a longevity record in this job —Dean Rusk, quoted in Christian Science Monitor, 17 Jan. 1968 There are actually three different uses in which look is followed by to and an infinitive. Two of the three go back several centuries, and two of the three are still of frequent occurrence. Let's take a look at them. The first is a sense of look expressing anticipation or expectation. The OED shows that it began to be followed by an infinitive construction in the 17th century: • Bruce, good morrow. What great author art thou chewing the cud upon? I look'd to have found you with your headache and morning qualms —Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso, 1676 This construction can still be found in the 20th century but is now less common than the others: • In any reasonable world, the noted writer in question, and the young lady interviewers, could look to have their mouths washed out with soap —Emile Capouya, Saturday Rev., 25 July 1964 In the 19th century this construction begins to turn up with look in the form of the present participle. The OED has Robert Southey in a letter written in 1830: • I too had been looking to hear from you. And a citation from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad (1896): • Two lovers looking to be wed. Examples with looking are very common in recent use. From the vantage point of the 1980s it is easy to look back at Southey and find hope as well as expectation and at Housman and find intention as well as anticipation. It is the notions of hope and intention that predominate in our most popular current use of look followed by to and the infinitive. Future dictionaries will probably have to give it a separate sense because the meaning has shifted away from expectation. It is most commonly found with looking but other forms of the verb are used as well. • Long as I'm playin', I'm not lookin' to be on no high pedestal —Louis Armstrong, quoted in N. Y. Times, 20 Jan. 1960 • ... Kierkegaard, whose work ... looked to demonstrate that we cannot know the moral role we enact —Norman Mailer, N.Y. Times Mag., 26 Sept. 1976 • "We weren't looking to trade Sam," said Giant Coach Allie Sherman —Sports Illustrated, 20 Apr. 1964 • ... two men have been around looking to kill him —Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's, November 1971 • ... Gremlins will arrive, looking to scare you silly — Richard Corliss, Time, 4 June 1984 • Today I'm a Commie-pinko-Antichrist looking to scalp Ron Reagan —Sam Donaldson, quoted in People, 14 June 1982 • ... everyone is tired and looking to go home —Larry Cole, TV Guide, 12 Nov. 1982 The newer use is differentiated from the older chiefly by the notions of trying or hoping or intending to do something, the greater frequency of the present-participle construction, and the greater ease of using it in the negative. There is a third use in which look is followed by to and the infinitive. This is the linking verb use of look in which it comes close in meaning to seem or appear. It has been used with an infinitive complement—almost always to be—since the later 18th century. It is almost always used with some form of look other than the present participle and is still common in current use: • It looked to be hard, mean work —John G. Mitchell, Smithsonian, May 1981 • ... looks to be a slow and laborious and rather uninteresting business —Howard Nemerov, American Scholar, Summer 1967 • If a fish looks to be in the contender class, the guide must keep it wet and alive —Horace Suttön, Saturday Rev., 4 Feb. 1978 • And this is the only film that Spielberg has ever made where the editing looks to be from desperation —Pauline Kael, New Yorker, 30 Dec. 1985 • Although the SAT score decline actually looks, on further examination, to provide only trivial information —Daniels 1983 3. The look to be construction that we just examined leads us to two British idioms of similar meaning but different makeup. We will do no more than describe and illustrate these briefly, as they have (so far) drawn no criticism. The first is look like followed by a present participle: • ... The Plain Dealer looked like being a failure at its first performance —James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century, 1969 • ... the timber industry looks like embarking on a period of rationalization —Edward Townsend, The Times (London), 21 Feb. 1974 The second idiom has look followed immediately by an object where an American would probably use look like or look to be: • It looks a lucrative investment —Adrian McGregor, National Times (Sydney), 5 Apr. 1975 • This is why 1986 ... looks a better prospect for an Arab-Israeli agreement —The Economist, 3 Jan. 1986 • ... done up to the nines, and in the event, looking an ass compared with the rest of the soberly dressed audience —Edward Mace, Observer Rev., 3 Mar. 1974 |
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