Prevent sb. from sth

[Haihao]

[Canadian45]

Adding from after the second "her" would make the sentence sound a lot better.

[Haihao]

Hi, thanks again. But how about the second quote question? I need its answer badly.

haihao

[Canadian45]

Both "patted" clauses are correct and are equally good.
"himself" should be left out!

[Haihao]

A million thanks again. Just one more question, may I?

[Pond969]

HaiHao ... The 'It' refers to the specific situation created by God (the Almighty). That is to say... God was pleased to make the Corsican Monster the Sovereign; It (making the Corsican king) pleased God.

As an aside, the use of 'pleased' in this context means 'satisfied' rather than suffused with pleasure.

[Haihao]

Hi, Pond969,

Thank you for the tip. I am getting closer to it now but I still can't take hold of the word 'whom' then. Could you please give me one more hint?

haihao

[Haihao]

Hi, again. I'm a kind of not very clear about:

1. pat her shoulder 100%= pat her on her shoulder because there should be some difference or I'm just overthinking?
2. prevent her from understanding = much better. But why?
3. himself = left out! 100% satisfied!

haihao

[Canadian45]

You don't need to say "pat her on her shoulder". You cannot pat her on someone else's shoulder!

"prevent someone from doing something" is just the correct wording.

"prevent someone doing something..."is a different grammatical construction. Her fear would prevent her understanding of her father's explanations from actually helping her.

[Haihao]

Hi, Uncle Canadian,

Nice to hear from you again. I think I have got your point. But just one more thing I want to make clear that it seems to me there is also another grammatical construction in English as you say: she hit me on my face, he beat me on my side, ... no end of them. It's hard for me to think it's no need to put them this way because we can say: she hit my face, he beat my side... instead. To me, 'she hit me on my face' seems putting an emphasis on 'hit me' while 'hit my face' no such emphasis but I am not sure if this is a correct catch.

haihao

[Yankee]

Hi Haihao

I would say 'prevent someone doing something' (without the word from) is a British usage. A search of the BNC for 'prevent her' turned up plenty of examples of the 'prevent someone doing something' construction:
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/saraWeb?qy=prevent+her

In North America, the prepostion from would be used in this construction.

Using the possessive adjective my instead of the in a sentence such as 'Jane hit me on the arm' is not necessary unless it would be unclear for some reason whose arm Jane hit. Saying 'on the arm' simply gives a more exact location of a hit that we already know is 'on me'.

Amy

[Haihao]

Hi Amy,

Thank you for everything. I am satisfied with it now.

haihao

[Pond969]

Haihao... I am not surprised you are having difficulty... this is a particularly unwieldy and clunky sentence. In fact ... and apologies here .... after looking at it again I think I may have misinterpreted it and steered you off course .... On closer reading, it would seem that the writer is asking that God cause the Corsican Monster (presumably Napoleon?) to be deposed by the angel that he has been pleased to raise as sovereign.... the 'whom' would refer to the angel. In English, the word 'whom' generally follow a preposition ('to whom', 'by whom' etc.) so I rather suspect the word 'who' should have been used here.

[Conchita]

[Conchita]

Sorry, Pond, I hadn't seen your last post. Well, let's hope things are a bit clearer for Haihao now.