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In weblio's entry about recommend (note: I can't understand the Japanese content), an example is given of "recommend" being followed by an infinitive:

She recommended me to try this oil for sunburn.

Is this valid English?

StoneyB on hiatus
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Golden Cuy
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2 Answers2

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Yes, this is acceptable in all registers. Recommend may take a that, gerund, or infinitive complement:

She recommended that I try this oil for sunburn. ... with ‘mandative subjunctive’
She recommended {me / my / ∅} trying this oil for sunburn.
She recommended me to try this oil for sunburn. ... with subject ‘raised’ in object case, as the indirect object of recommend

  • ADDED: As FumbleFingers points out, the version with the infinitive and raising may also be understood as a recommendation that I (me) be the direct object: the person recommended to someone else as the person who should try this oil. This ambiguity will ordinarily not arise in context, but it may explain why, as Travis points out, the infinitive complement has been losing ground to the that complement: see Travis' link to ELU.

An older use which appears to have virtually disappeared is the infinitive with prepositional dative:

She recommended to me to try this oil for sunburn.

Community
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StoneyB on hiatus
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    I'm a native speaker (US west coast, living in Australia now), and I'm not sure that I've heard this construction before. Apparently it's much less common now than it was in the past: http://english.stackexchange.com/a/52090/89555 (The thread is quite interesting in its own right.) – Travis Aug 27 '14 at 14:35
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    It's probably worth noting that your third form She recommended me to try X could also mean she recommended to someone else* that I should be the one to try X* (rather than, say, herself, or some other "human guinea-pig"). Idiomatically, the very first credible noun after recommend is usually the thing being recommended (so for OP's intended sense, I'd probably go for She recommended this oil for sunburn, as a "cut-down" version of your first form). – FumbleFingers Aug 27 '14 at 14:39
  • @Travis A good point - see my addition. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 27 '14 at 14:47
  • @FumbleFingers A good point - see my addition. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 27 '14 at 14:47
  • I've been put straight several times on ELU (by people who know more than me) when I offer a reason why some usage might have gone out of fashion. But I commented years ago that I don't much like the infinitive after recommend. And for me at least, that "potential ambiguity" is almost certainly a factor, even if other people might have different reasons. – FumbleFingers Aug 27 '14 at 16:10
  • @FumbleFingers Linguists have in the last generation become very interested in the question of complementation licensing, and have concluded that there is a Great Complement Shift in progress, replacing infinitives-in-general with gerunds-in-general; but in any particular instance the direction of the shift appears to be pretty much random. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 27 '14 at 16:14
  • Yeah - we haven't quite reached the point where it would be entirely natural of me to refer to the ascending* of the gerund* (as opposed to ascent or ascendancy), but on the basis of the long-term trend that day may eventually come. – FumbleFingers Aug 27 '14 at 17:03
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You could also use "She recommended I try this oil for sunburn" or "She recommended this oil for sunburn". The latter is slightly ambiguous!

Nick B
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