"I'm going to take and stir the cake mix"

Question

Please explain why this sentence is grammatically incorrect.

I'm going to take and stir the cake mix.

Two people apparently didn't like your question (they downvoted it but didn't say why). I think it's quite interesting actually - particularly because you've already got three different answers, none of which seem compatible with either of the others! — FumbleFingers, Feb 11 '12 at 22:37
Can you explain, in your question, what reasons you have for thinking it is ungrammatical? Did someone tell you that it is bad (and did they tell you why) or do you think it is bad? This will give more direction on how to answer. — Mitch, Feb 11 '12 at 23:41
@Mitch: I don't think it's important that OP describes his example as "ungrammatical" - a description which at least some answers here seem to at least tacitly agree with. The key point is that OP knows there's something not quite right, which I thoroughly agree is the case. — FumbleFingers, Feb 11 '12 at 23:48
@FumbleFingers, I don't find it marked at all. But the more important point is that the question must surely have some motivation, and explaining that motivation is not only evidence that the question is on-topic ("questions based on actual problems that you face") but, as Mitch said, useful information in answering. — Peter Taylor, Feb 12 '12 at 23:43
@Peter Taylor: I'm surprised you don't see anything odd. It's tricky finding evidence, but consider "take a cigarette and smoke" - 68 hits in Google Books, compared to zero for "take and smoke a cigarette". The verb "take" is semantically weak here; apparently most people don't like another verb separating it from the object noun. Imho there's no question about this on average, even if you don't register it. — FumbleFingers, Feb 13 '12 at 02:54
@FumbleFingers, BNC has 55 hits for "take and [verb]", vs 106 for "take a|the [noun] and [verb]", but quite a lot of those 106 wouldn't make any sense with re-ordering. E.g. take the hint and leave reworked as take and leave the hint is nonsensical. — Peter Taylor, Feb 13 '12 at 07:59
@Peter Taylor: If you don't recognise the awkwardness of "(weak verb) AND (strong verb) [some noun]", I'm hardly going to be able to persuade you of it in a comment. I don't claim to know everything about what's going on here, but I really am surprised that you think those of us who do are somehow imagining things. And I'm disappointed at the lack of attention the question has been given. — FumbleFingers, Feb 13 '12 at 12:41
@FumbleFingers, who said I thought you're imagining something? I said that I didn't find it marked, not that it wasn't marked for anyone; and provided evidence that suggests it's a relatively frequent construction in British English (or at least some dialects thereof). So I don't think you can claim that "there's no question about this on average" without more evidence than you've supplied so far, but I'm not denying that you've internalised different rules to me. — Peter Taylor, Feb 13 '12 at 13:34
@Peter Taylor: I don't quite understand your distinction. To me, if you speak of constructions being "marked" you're adopting the descriptive linguist's perspective. I, for example, have no problem with "abso-bloody-lutely" in the sense that I hear and use such constructions regularly, but I acknowledge it as "marked" because I know lots of people find the splitting of a word like that to be odd. — FumbleFingers, Feb 13 '12 at 14:25
...I imagine John Lawler here recognises lots of usages as "marked" even though they don't bother him personally in the slightest. He's even apt to describe a usage as "cromulent", which I find decidedly odd because I'm far from convinced that neologism yet has a generally-recognised definition in the first place! — FumbleFingers, Feb 13 '12 at 14:30
@FumbleFingers, continuing in the descriptivist line, I've seen marked used subjectively often enough that it wouldn't occur to me to consider such use marked. — Peter Taylor, Feb 13 '12 at 22:30
It's not just the verb take that keeps this construction from working, it's the combination take and stir. Google books lists 74 hits for "take and hold the city", as opposed to 23 for "take the city and hold it", and in some of these 23 there are grammatical reasons for not using take and hold; e.g. "take the city and hold it until ..." — Peter Shor, Feb 19 '12 at 15:09

John Lawler · Answer 1 · 2014-03-22T15:57:17.470

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The take and + Vb construction in English is one of a number that fall under the general heading of Serial Verbs (known also as "small verbs", in the case of English). Take is a causative of go, a verb which occurs frequently in such constructions.

Serial verbs occur when two verbs whose meanings complement each other are used together in a single verb phrase. Some languages frequently form complex serial verb constructions, like go cut carry stack wood.

Other English serial verb constructions include

go + V-ing, as in We’re going shopping. They went hiking. Let’s go digging for clams
- plus ungrammatical *Let’s go eating. *We’re going teaching. *They went daydreaming.
go and + V, as in Bill went and dug some clams.
come + V, as in He asked us to come eat the clams.
come and + V, as in He said "Come and get it!"
go + V, as in We’re going to go eat them.

See question 4 on this Midterm Exam.

edited Mar 22 '14 at 15:57

answered Feb 11 '12 at 22:51

John Lawler

107,887

This is a good description of "take"; can you flesh out how it helps answer the question at hand? – MrHen Feb 12 '12 at 18:03
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Executive summary: It's not ungrammatical, but it is colloquial, and it may be heard as "regional", "foreign", or "incorrect" by those who consider their own usage "correct", "normal", "standard", or "grammatical". Judging by the OP's question, this group includes some English teachers. – John Lawler Feb 12 '12 at 18:08
I don't think come and go are relevant to OP's usage, because they don't attach to a noun. We're talking about Take/get and eat the clams, not Come/go and eat the clams. In the former case we can (and frequently do) say Take the clams and eat [them], but we can't say Come the clams and eat them. – FumbleFingers Feb 13 '12 at 03:00
Take is a causative of go, just as bring is a causative of come. They have very similar syntax and occurrence in idioms. See Fillmore on Coming and Going. – John Lawler Feb 13 '12 at 18:26
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I don't think this is relevant. I read the question the question as asking how come "I'm going to take the cake mix and stir it" can't be rephrased as "I'm going to take and stir the cake mix", even though it's quite common in general for "V1 NP and V2 it" and "V1 and V2 NP" to be equivalent. – ruakh Feb 13 '12 at 23:56
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Because take and VP is an idiom, and not just two conjoined verbs. Someone who says I'm going to take and hit your nose is not saying that he's going to take your nose and that he's going to hit your nose. All that he's actually going to take and do is hit your nose. – John Lawler Feb 14 '12 at 00:32
This doesn't make any sense at all to me. You've given several examples of come and go being used as "serial verbs", but none at all for "take". Unless you're seriously saying his one is a reasonable utterance using a serial verb. In which case obviously OP disagrees - he dislikes it so much he thinks it's "ungrammatical". I don't go that far, but I find it ungainly, to say the least. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '12 at 01:09
It may be true that "take and VP" is an idiom for some speakers -- I'm not one of them, by the way, and find "I'm going to take and hit your nose" bizarre at best -- but that doesn't explain why there should be any speakers who accept "I'm going to take the cake mix and stir it" but find the logically equivalent "I'm going to take and stir the cake mix" to be ungrammatical. – ruakh Feb 14 '12 at 01:13
I'm not in the business of deciding why anybody might decide that some sentence of English is ungrammatical. Ask them. My position is that people vary. – John Lawler Feb 14 '12 at 02:28
But the OP did ask, and this is the answer you gave. If you're not in the business of answering that question, then why did you pretend to answer it? – ruakh Feb 14 '12 at 03:02
(By the way, when replying to a specific person who's not the owner of a post, you can ensure that StackExchange notifies them of it by prefixing @ plus their username, e.g. @ruakh.) – ruakh Feb 14 '12 at 03:03
If it's not true that the sentence is ungrammatical, what would a non-pretend answer to the sentence as asked look like? – John Lawler Feb 14 '12 at 03:39
It would say that it's not ungrammatical. The question asked why it's ungrammatical; an answer can reject that premise, but I think it needs to be explicit about it. – ruakh Feb 14 '12 at 13:19
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OK, I hereby explicitly reject the presupposition of the Original Question to the effect that the Take and + VP construction is ungrammatical. It is not ungrammatical. Nihil Obstat. Imprimatur. – John Lawler Feb 14 '12 at 13:59
@JohnLawler: Many of us find the sentence in question not ungrammatical. But do you find the sentence weak? I mean... if a student of yours wrote a sentence like that in a research paper (not as an example of something), would you not recommend that it be changed? I don't mean Take and VP... I mean this combination, specifically. – prash Feb 14 '12 at 19:01
I'm sorry, my students do not write research papers about stirring cake mixes. The original question is silly, because it isn't ungrammatical; now it's a different question, about whether it's "weak", whatever that means? Gimme a break. Define what you mean by "weak"? I don't mean anything by it, unless I'm talking about muscle strength, regular Germanic verbs, or secondary stress. – John Lawler Feb 14 '12 at 19:26
@JohnLawler: Of course, if a person writes a paper in a linguistics journal, the paper won't be about stirring cake mix. Of the many things, it could be about discourse analysis of scripts. As for weak, in this context, I'd use it to mean "of questionable grammaticality". – prash Feb 15 '12 at 10:01
"Of questionable grammaticality" means that someone has questioned the grammaticality. That means that someone thinks it might not be grammatical. This is in fact where the question came from; the OP presupposed that it was ungrammatical; we already know this. If that's what "weak" means, then it's "weak". But clearly there are always some people who doubt anything, so it's not a very helpful description. – John Lawler Feb 17 '12 at 17:06

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

There is nothing wrong with it grammatically. "Take" is just a verb applied to the cake mix, and you can apply lots of verbs in one sentence.

I'm going to take the cake mix.

I'm going to take and stir the cake mix.

I'm going to take, stir and pour the cake mix.

I'm going to take, stir, pour and bake the cake mix.

However it does sound odd, and that's because there is a more commonly used sentence structure that's used with take. Take is such a common word, that it has these kinds of ultra-common uses. When we're accustomed to hearing a word used in a particular way, it sounds odd to hear it phrased a different way. It makes us think "Huh? Why didn't they phrase it the normal way?"

The common structure is:

I'm going to take the noun and verb it.

So:

I'm going to take the cake mix and stir it.

I'm going to take the cake mix and stir and pour it.

I'm going to take the cake mix and stir, pour and bake it.

Note that we have and twice in these sentences, because it fits that "take it and [verb] it" structure, but you could drop one and if you like:

I'm going to take the cake mix, stir, pour and bake it.

Also note that most of the time the take is a redundant part of the phrase in any case. You can't stir the cake mix without taking hold of it, so that part is implied even if you don't say it. There is really no need to use the word take here, except insofar as it becomes a familiar and natural sounding sentence.

I'm going to stir the cake mix.

FumbleFingers · Answer 3 · 2012-02-14T17:02:26.000

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Grammatically, there's nothing wrong, but there is something slightly odd about this usage of "take". In "recipe" contexts we often see "Take three apples, two pears, etc., [and cook like this]". We do a bit of a double-take in OP's sentence because we're expecting one or more nouns (ingredients) to follow "take".

The word "take" has very little meaning in such contexts, because the cake mix isn't actually being taken to anywhere, or taken from any particular place or person. We wouldn't just say "Take the cake mix" as a sentence on its own here. It's already present - we're just calling attention to it. Thanks to @ruakh for naming the role of "take" here as simply to "topicalise" "the cake mix".

In this construction, take (or get) is really just a "placeholder" verb introducing the subject noun (cake mix) - so long as the noun follows immediately we don't need to consider what if anything "take" means. If instead we meet "and" and another verb, we're encouraged to treat "take" as a meaningful independent verb - but it isn't, which is why OP's sentence sounds "awkward".

Taking similar examples common enough to be meaningfully contrasted, "take and compare this" gets only 2 hits in Google Books, where the more "natural" "take this and compare" gets 191. And "bring and show it" gets 9 hits, compared to 791 for "bring it and show it".

To take a more "unexceptional" conjoining of two meaningful but relatively disparate verbs that aren't so awkward, consider the 236,000 written instances of "buy and read" in Google Books. Even more relevant, 2470 instances of "take and read this", with "take" used as a meaningful verb (i.e. - physically take this text away with you, and read it later).

John Lawler refers to this as serial verb usage, but I'm not convinced English really has such a construction. And if it does, it seems more like e.g. "Look what you've gone [or "been"] and done!".

From the comments/votes here it's clear not everyone sees anything unusual in conjoining two disparate transitive verbs with "and" before naming the noun to which both refer. Personally I find it clumsy unless the context and/or inherent meaning of the verbs make it natural to conflate them into a single integrated action.

In OP's example, "take" does little more than indicate that the speaker is about to introduce the noun subject - but instead we get another verb, which grates on my ear.

edited Feb 14 '12 at 17:02

answered Feb 11 '12 at 22:34

FumbleFingers

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+1. I think you're spot-on: the problem is that "take" is so semantically light. In fact, I think almost the sole purpose of "take" in "I'm going to take the cake mix and stir it" is to topicalize "the cake mix" and put it before "stir": otherwise we'd just say "I'm going to stir the cake mix." – ruakh Feb 14 '12 at 00:00
@ruakh: I'm really glad to have someone finally acknowledge that I have a point here. I was even starting to doubt myself, and thinking I was imagining the whole effect. I frankly do not accept John's assertion that take and stir is in the same league as "Come and get it!" or "What have you gone and done?". So far, I haven't been able to come up with a single verb that can follow "take" that way. It's obvious to me that a doctor's "Take and read this leaflet [about your condition]" is different again, because the doctor really does want you to "take" it. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '12 at 01:04
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+1. I don't think this sentence is really any different from "I'm going to wash and dry this shirt tonight, so I can wear it again tomorrow". The only reason why it seems slightly stilted is that few of us would use the verb "take" in a way that is so light of meaning. So instead of picturing yourself saying it, picture Nigella Lawson holding a great big bowl of cake mix close to her chest, gazing into the camera, and saying "I'm going to take and stir this cake mix". What sounded slightly wrong before suddenly sounds very right indeed. – Feb 14 '12 at 05:46
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@David Wallace: Perhaps there are regional variations here. "I took the cake mix and stirred it" sounds fine to me, but "I took and stirred the cake mix" sounds like something only a non-native speaker would say. I perceive a big difference between conjoining take+stir and your wash+dry (or develop+optimize in David Schwartz's profile). Those verbs constitute "natural pairings", but OP's example doesn't. – FumbleFingers Feb 14 '12 at 14:42
That the person said "take the cake mix" seems to imply that the stirring can't be done at the current location of the cake mix, or at least, that the cake mix needs to be held. – prash Feb 19 '12 at 13:28
@prash: I think you are simply mistaken. In this type of construction, to take sth is often simply the equivalent of to turn one's attention to. You could in principle say you'll take the mix and stir it simply by flipping the switch on a food processor in front of you, without ever holding it or moving it from the mixing bowl already in position within the food processor where it might have been sitting for some time. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '12 at 14:32
'Take and stir X' is arguably zeugmatic since it twins a semantically bleached verb usage with a semantically charged one. Acceptability is debatable (and grammaticality usually follows in the wake of idiomaticity). It's a violation of Orwell's 'never use anything that sounds outlandish' [unless that's your intention]. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 29 '23 at 18:05
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@EdwinAshworth: I think this question might well be the only one where I've actually downvoted an answer from john Lawler! Whatever exactly *serial / small* verbs might be, I can see how (with or without *and) come sit by me, go fuck yourself, come and see, go and get it* all fall into the same general class - but I can't see how *take* fits in there. But your arguably zeugmatic since it twins a semantically bleached verb usage with a semantically charged one looks spot on to me. (I might tack that on to my answer if I get around to it! :) – FumbleFingers Jul 29 '23 at 19:06
But then zeugmas are not accepted as categorically unacceptable or even categorically ungrammatical by all. Paul Hellweg – Edwin Ashworth Jul 30 '23 at 14:45

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 11 '13 at 18:06

Here's a completely different angle on this thread: take and is a quirky little colloquialism in Wisconsin. As such, it misses the point to discuss whether take functions as a legitimate transitive verb in expressions with take and. Once you’ve heard a person who routinely inserts take and into sentences, it puts the take and stir example in that specific light. Here are a few examples I've heard:

After this meeting ends, we’re gonna take and go to Pizza Hut. Wanna come?
When we were kids, we used to take and make a fort out of the snow.
On third and long, you gotta take and push the offensive lineman right outta the way!

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 25 '17 at 19:57

I'm going to take and make this as simple as possible. Many people on here have tried to take and make sense out of all of this. But I haven't yet heard something that I can take and wrap my head around. So I'm going to take and say this, I believe that this is a regional affectation in America. Now, I cannot prove this but I can take and see that where I come from it is like nails on a chalk board to hear the word TAKE added, nay FORCED, SQUEEZED into a statement. It seems to be an attempt to add credence to what the person talking about themselves are actually doing. Many times it is used when one is formulating a narrative about what they are indeed doing. So it adds "one more thing" to what was already a basic, run-of-the-mill thing that they are describing. "I took and put the keys in the ignition" or "watch me in this video, I take and take a double take when they take and hit my fake snake with a rake"

Hi, Eric. Any chance that you can take and cite a dictionary of regional English to the effect that "take and [other verb]" is "a regional affectation in America"? If that is an accurate statement, I imagine that some expert in regional dialects will have identified and documented the usage, as various nineteenth-century observers did with the form "fixing to [verb]." Also, it would be interesting to know which specific regions of North America have widely adopted the "take and [other verb]" form. — Sven Yargs, Dec 25 '17 at 22:45
See my comment on David Schwartz’ answer below. I can confirm the regional usage for The Southern Tier of NY State 60s,70s,80s. — Jim, Dec 26 '17 at 04:49

prash · Answer 6 · 2012-02-19T14:12:18.563

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The sentence, "I'm going to take and stir the cake mix", sounds weak to my ears. Though I'd advise against that construct, I'm not sure if I would call it ungrammatical.

The reason it sounds odd has to do with Thematic roles (called Semantic Roles here). In the sentence discussed, the same phrase, the cake mix takes on the role of the Theme of take and the role of the Patient of stir. However, in the sentence "I'm going to take the cake mix and stir it", it is the Patient of stir, and there is no shared object.

Here are a couple of examples that still use conjunctions of verbs, but where the shared object does not perform a different thematic role for each verb:

I'm going to take and gift the cake mix.

I'm going to beat and stir the cake mix.

These don't sound odd to me. (Assuming I had good reason to gift cake mix. That I would attempt to beat cake mix is probably an indication of how much I know about cooking.)

=== Exercise left to the reader ===

VerbNet has a fairly large list of verbs, where they have listed out the thematic roles associated with each verb. Pick combinations of verbs and check if the semantic roles of their objects match. See if this agrees with your own intuition of which verbs can be combined with one of and, or and but.

edited Feb 19 '12 at 14:12

answered Feb 14 '12 at 00:13

prash

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As I write, Google Books has 49 instances of "to beat and stir the", but none at all of "to take and gift the" (for which the only instance on the whole Internet is this actual answer). Beat and stir is a "compatible" verb pair; take and gift is not. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '12 at 03:41
@FumbleFingers: If you had not done a google search, would "take and gift" have sounded wrong to you? Distributional grammar, i.e. what you are doing with these statistics, is a fine tool for talking about what exists. But remember that nouns and verbs are open-class words: there will always be new nouns and new verbs. A strict adherence to distributional analysis would advocate prohibiting their usage. My answer deals with the implicit rules behind all conjunctions of verbs. – prash Feb 19 '12 at 07:43
@FumbleFingers: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wQmOMMG-dXYC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=distributional+grammar#v=onepage&q=distributional%20grammar&f=false gives a broader explanation for why linguists moved away from distributional analysis for making judgments of grammaticality. – prash Feb 19 '12 at 08:04
Per my own answer here, I'm not talking about "grammaticality". But I do think the usage "to take sth" as we're talking about here is slightly informal/modern, whereas "to gift sth" is formal/dated, bordering on archaic. They sound like a terrible pairing to me even before I check to see if anyone has ever written them together. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '12 at 12:17
@FumbleFingers: I don't see this take as one of the informal meanings mentioned at http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/take, and I don't see how this gift can be considered one of the formal usages mentioned at http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/gift. If you mean something beyond that, you'll have to define your usage of the terms. – prash Feb 19 '12 at 13:25
Well there's not really much context in "I'm going to take and gift the cake mix", so I can't know exactly what you intend take to mean there. I'm assuming pick up/take in hand, rather than carry [some distance] to another place, and I believe that first meaning is more common today (particularly in speech) than it was, say a century ago. Your dictionary barely mentions "to gift" as a verb except in the modern British sports journalism context, which can't possibly apply to the giving of cake mix. The verb sense for your example is well and truly antiquated, imho. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '12 at 14:26
let us continue this discussion in chat – prash Feb 19 '12 at 14:53

Kris · Answer 7 · 2012-02-20T08:50:49.033

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This sentence is not grammatically incorrect:

I'm going to take and stir the cake mix.

The construction is just not done in the English language.

You will find examples of such construction, in fact the exact sentence, in at least a few other languages, though.

Every grammatical construction -- even one that makes perfect sense -- need not be usable in English, for want of familiarity of usage.

edited Feb 20 '12 at 08:50

answered Feb 19 '12 at 14:42

Kris

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You can use this construction with other pairs of verbs. "I buy and sell antiques." or "The army will take and hold the fort." The question is why "take and stir" doesn't work. – Peter Shor Feb 19 '12 at 14:52
True, but you forgot to add "in English". I said this construction can be used just as it is in some other languages. – Kris Feb 19 '12 at 14:56
As for the 'why not', the reason is it is unfamiliar usage in English, not technically different. – Kris Feb 19 '12 at 14:58
I would agree that there is nothing technically wrong, but it doesn't work. @PeterShor - "buy and sell" works, as an idiomatic expression, whereas "take and hold" doesn't, to my mind, sound natural. – Schroedingers Cat Feb 19 '12 at 17:40
@Schroedingers Cat: consider this Google Ngram; take and hold the city is quite a bit more common than take the city and hold ... Looking at Google hits, it seems that take something and hold it is usually used when you literally take something in your hands, but take and hold something is quite common when it means take possession of something. – Peter Shor Feb 19 '12 at 19:16
OK, maybe "take and hold" in a military (or pseudo-military) context is fine. I think it is just not something that I would necessarily use. – Schroedingers Cat Feb 19 '12 at 21:38
Apart from "take and hold", I have a bigger list at http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2546/discussion-between-prash-and-fumblefingers, if you're interested. – prash Feb 19 '12 at 22:08

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Jul 29 '23 at 18:04

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I know I'm years late to this party, but — My first husband used "take and" all the time, and it drove me nuts. In "I'm going to take and change the oil in the car," or "I'm going to take and finish putting up those shelves," the "take" serves no meaningful purpose.

It's not ungrammatical in any way; it's just an American regionalism (though I've never been able to figure out what region — he was brought up in rural California). It seems to be the same kind of thing as "I'm going to go ahead and put that cake in the oven," in which the "go ahead" serves no real purpose — but you hear that all the time.

edited Jul 29 '23 at 18:04

KillingTime

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answered Jul 29 '23 at 17:50

ewormuth

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Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Jul 29 '23 at 18:04

Jack Robbin · Answer 9 · 2012-02-11T12:20:38.073

In plain English, in this context, it (i.e. the verb take) takes an object.

That is to say, the verb "take" takes, i.e. is required to be followed by, an object. It is functioning as a transitive verb.

So, a correct rendition would be: "I'm going to take the cake mix (object) and stir it (i.e. the object - cake mix)."

Note: "take" can also be used in an intransitive form.

For example: John takes but never gives. (No direct object - taken, given, or needed.)

score -2 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 19 '12 at 16:53

When combining verbs in a sentence like that, the verbs have to be in the same tense. In the sentence, "going to take" is future tense, while "stir" is simple present. I believe that in the case of "going to", it is actually allowed to omit "going to" for the second verb, but that would imply, that the two actions happen at the same time. Here, clearly, the mix will not be stirred, until the "taking" of it is done.

"I'm going to take and stir the cake mix"

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