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Can someone tell me the difference between the two? It's been so long since I've had to do this. Here are the two sentences:

  1. Seeing Indonesia defend better than Argentina makes my day.
  2. Seeing that Indonesia defends better than Argentina makes my day.
Skarns
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    Yes. The that introduces a tensed clause, so it has to be defends for present tense. Without the that, the sense verb see can take a to-less infinitive clause defend better than Argentina with Raised subject Indonesia. But infinitives don't have tenses (that's what "non-finite" means). – John Lawler Jul 07 '18 at 17:13
  • 'Seeing' is a near synonym of 'watching'. But 'seeing that' means 'realising that' or 'having my suspicions confirmed' etc. / In the UK, 'defends' would be replaced by 'defend' in (2) as notional agreement (England have won 2 - 0) is the norm. – Edwin Ashworth Jul 07 '18 at 18:01
  • I think JL means that "Indonesia" is a raised object, not subject. Subordinate clauses cannot have raised subjects! – BillJ Jul 07 '18 at 19:22

2 Answers2

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That's because in the first sentence "Seeing Indonesia defend" is a set phrase (see somebody/something + infinitive), when you add that begin a new grammatical sentence afterwards, I hope that answers your question :)

Pantera Onca
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In the first example, "defend" is in the infinitive form as it is part of a modifying phrase that modifies the noun "Indonesia." You could just as well use the gerund "defending" as the modifier instead.

In the second example, "that" introduces a clause, not a phrase. So "defends" isn't functioning as a modifier but as a verb, a verb whose subject is "Indonesia" and is thus conjugated accordingly.

Maybe it's easier to see if we change out the noun "Indonesia" for a pronoun:

  1. "Seeing him defend himself makes my day."

  2. "Seeing that he defends himself makes my day."

In the first example, "him" begins the direct object of the gerund "seeing," and "defend himself" is a modifier of the pronoun "him." "Him" is not the subject of the verb "defend." "Him" cannot be a subject because it is an object pronoun, not a subject pronoun.

In the second example, "that" begins a clause in which "he" is the subject of the verb "defends." "He" is not an object because "he" is not an object pronoun. "He" is a subject pronoun.

These differences are harder to see in your example because we can use "Indonesia" as either a subject or an object. By switching to a pronoun instead of a noun, we can more readily see that "Indonesia" doesn't have the same function in those sentences, particularly in relation to "defend" or "defends," respectively, and that they themselves don't have the same function, either.

Billy
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  • That's not how 1. works. This is a catenative construction, where the intervening NP "Indonesia" is the syntactic object of "seeing", and the understood subject of "defend". "Indonesia" is called a 'raised' object here because the verb it relates to syntactically is higher in the syntactic structure than the one it relates to semantically. The matrix clause has the subject missing, but understood as "me/my". – BillJ Jul 07 '18 at 19:30
  • It is exactly how "1." works. What you've said is just a more complicated way of saying what I said. "Indonesia" is an object, which is what I said. Being a so-called "understood subject," your words, isn't being an actual subject, which I said "Indonesia" isn't the subject because it's really not. What follows "Indonesia" (i.e., "defend better than...") is the object compliment. That (i.e., "defend better than...) modifies the object, which is what I said. I even provided examples to show how it's an object and how "defend better than..." modifies the object. – Billy Jul 11 '18 at 07:13
  • "Defend better than Argentina" is not an object complement, but a catenative one. Object complements are either AdjPs ("He painted the house red") or NPs, ("I consider that bad advice"), but not clauses, especially not non-finite ones. In any case, object complements are not modifiers; they are complements (arguments) of the verb -- they simply have object-orientation, i.e. they 'refer' to the object. Like most non-finite clauses, "defend better than Argentina" is syntactically subjectless, though we understand the subject to be "Indonesia". Btw, the word is 'complement' (not compliment). – BillJ Jul 11 '18 at 07:43