Verb 'aim' and usage

Question

Hi Mike,

I have a question regarding the word 'aim'.

'aim' as verb can be used as following:

The agreement among countries  aims at  unifying them.

The agreement among countries  aims to  unify them.

However I confused about the following examples:

1- The agreement  aimed at  unifying the countries has not been finalized.

2- The agreement  aiming at  unifying the countries has not been finalized.

In first sentence, 'aimed' is considered correct, while in the second 'aiming' is considered wrong. The confusion stems from my understanding. I interpret the second as the agreement itself is the means to unify the countries.

Can you help with clarification.

Thanks in advance

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Mo2men , That's a great question. I'm happy to respond. :-)

In some ways, we are getting into the metaphorical, almost poetic, side of language. These are issues that will not appear much on the GMAT SC. The sentences in which " aim " is used as a verb are perfectly correct: 1) The agreement among countries aims at unifying them. 2) The agreement among countries aims to unifying them. These are grammatically and idiomatically correct. They can and do appear in newspapers and news journals this way. In a way, though, we are being metaphorical here, because really it's the people who write the treaty or negotiate the treaty that have intentions and aims. The treaty itself is really a piece of paper with no mind of its own. In a stark literal sense, we can't say that the treaty " aims " anything. Here, we are being a little metaphorical: insofar as the treaty represents the aggregate of the intentions, the aims, of a large number of people, we can say that the treaty " aims " to do something. Because this is metaphorical, almost personifying a document, this cuts some corners with logic, as poetry often does and should. That's fine, and it's perfectly acceptable in popular news reporting, but such liberal use of metaphor is less common in more academic writing, and GMAT leans toward this less metaphorical and more literal side. Conceivably, #1 or #2 could still appear on the GMAT. If we were going to be hyper-literal, we would say 3) The agreement among countries is aimed at at unifying them . That's also correct, and technically, this is logically correct now, but it's a little longer, and taking a longer way to specify something that is already well understood in a commonly used metaphor makes this sound a little stodgy and stilted. What fuddy-duddy would say #3? Now, suppose we have a participle. Remember that the present participle, " aiming ," is an active participle, and the past participle, " aimed ," is a past participle. Hence, if we are going use a participle construction, the grammar forces us to make a logical choice between active & passive construction. In particular, with the same number of words, we could choose the active or the passive construction. Well, if it is not going to take one syllable more to say this in the logically correct fashion, then the metaphor loses a great deal of its utility. It is logically correct to say that the treaty is an object of its authors' aiming and that it doesn't do any aiming on its own. Thus, we use the past participle, the passive participle. 4) The agreement aimed at unifying the countries has not been finalized . We would be far less likely to see: 5) The agreement aiming at unifying the countries has not been finalized . Yes, this does continue the metaphor we had in #1 and #2, but the only true advantage of the metaphor in #1 and #2 was that it created a brevity and sense of clarity & directness that #3 lacked. It made sense to use the metaphor if we could communicate meaning more quickly. Well, once we use the participle construction, sticking with the metaphor doesn't help us anymore: it has lost its principal advantage and utility. If poetry & metaphor are a more concise way to communicate meaning, then why use the overwordy literal phrasing? But once conditions change, and it just as concise and just as direct to say what we have to say either metaphorically or literally, then utility of metaphor declines significantly. Now, admittedly, in poetry, in song lyrics, in humorous banter, etc. there are many other values to metaphor, but the cut-and-dry factual world of the GMAT, metaphor is on an extremely short leash. All this is quite sophisticated and beyond what most folks would need to understand for the GMAT SC. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

Mo2men · Answer

Thanks Mike for your usual and detailed support. I may share what triggered this question. it might help with a lesson learned.

I was studying Magoosh idiom flash card. I bumped into 'composing' and its usage. This word triggered what I read in Manhattan about 'aimed' in its following exmaple cited from the book:

We adopted new procedures AIMED AT REDUCING theft.

We adopted new procedures WITH THE AIM OF REDUCING theft.

They claim that both are right. So I was confused so I suggested if we use 'composing' so we can use 'aiming' but i could not find any answer to support my claim until you answered today. If I put what you said and Manhattan claims about 'aimed', I can say that 'procedures' themselves do not 'aim' but they were created by people for an 'aim' or 'target' so we use 'aimed' NOT 'aiming'.

Am I correct in my analysis?

I think the problem that non-native speakers like me loves to use analogy with some words and function in language. This is big trap.

:thanks

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Mo2men , Both the MGMAT sentences, of course, are 100% correct. The first uses the passive participle---again, the people did the aiming, and the procedure was the thing through which their aims were directed; yes, you are correct in your analysis. The constructions " with an aim ," " with a purpose ," " with the intention ," etc. are quite common. When we humans create anything---a book, a business, a political party, this response on GMAT Club to you---theoretically we are using the thing we create to express our will, our intentions, our perspective, etc. We put our human-ness into what we create. Thus, even though this response to you is at some level an animate collection of 1's and 0's in some indecipherable code, we can say that I responded to you " with my thought, with my perspective ." I would say: be very careful analogies between verbs, because there are many different kinds of verbs. The verb " to aim " is very active, very intentional, very deliberate: it is the action of a conscious and perceptive being. By contrast, the verb " to compose ," in the sense of the content of something, is more of an "existence" verb, like " appear ," " seem ," " persist ", etc.: for example, some combination of plates and glasses and flatware can " compose " a dinner set, but the individual items doing the " composing " are just inanimate objects sitting there. Verbs of pure being don't make good analogs for verbs of action & intention. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

Verb 'aim' and usage

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