HELPING

This type has one independent role, the Helper (main clause subject), who joins in with someone (complement clause subject) to bring about some event. The main member of the type is help; there are also a number of hyponyms of help with specialized meanings, e.g. aid, assist.

Like MAKING verbs, help takes a Modal (FOR) TO complement. The subject of the complement clause must be different from the subject of the main clause. (There is an idiomatic usage, e.g. He helped himself to the chocolates, but the reflexive pronoun after help cannot here be followed by a verb.) Help differs from MAKING verbs in that either the subject or the post-subject portion of the complement clause can be omitted. One may say John helped Mary if one’s listeners could be expected to know what he helped her do. And John helped to paint the wall is acceptable if one does not wish to specify who the other people painting were.

We noted that force, allow, etc. require the inclusion of to but that make, have and let require it to be omitted, at least in the active. With help the to may be either included or omitted, in both active and passive. There is a semantic difference. Compare:

(1a) John helped Mary to eat the pudding (by guiding the spoon to her mouth, since she was still an invalid)

(1b) John helped Mary eat the pudding (he ate half)

When to is omitted, as in (1b), the sentence is likely to mean that the Helper did part of the activity; when to is included, as in (1a), it is more likely to mean that the Helper made things easy for the complement clause subject so that she could do what needed to be done.

The Helper is generally HUMAN, but can be an abstract noun or even a complement clause, e.g. John’s success helped him gain confidence, Believing in God helped me to get through that crisis.

An alternative syntactic construction for help is for the ‘person helped’ to be followed by a preposition (usually with) and an -ing clause, e.g. He helped Mary with writing the letter (this is then more likely to have the sense of (1b) than that of (1a)). Of the more specialized HELPING verbs, aid usually refers to help given by some official body, rather than by an individual (America aided Great Britain in fighting the Nazi terror), while assist implies that the Helper fulfils a secondary role (Fred assisted John in building the wall by handing him bricks). There are also the inherently reciprocal verbs cooperate (with) and collaborate (with). All of these verbs can take a Modal (FOR) TO clause—the to may not be omitted—but are more frequently found with a preposition (often, in) plus an -ing clause, or else with an ACCTIVITY noun in O slot, e.g. America aided Great Britain in its war against the Nazi terror.

Hinder is opposite in meaning to one sense of help, but does not freely occur with a complement clause; the preferred construction is with a simple NP in O slot (referring to the person who was hindered) and then a relative clause or an adverbial clause describing the activity that was affected, e.g. John hindered the workman who was/while he was installing a new telephone (by continually hiding his tools). Support has some semantic similarity with help. This verb, and its opposite, oppose, take ING complements, e.g. She supported/opposed John’s being nominated for president of the company.