My instinct is that when it means "to have as an inescapable consequence", entail must be followed by a noun. In all the grammatical examples I have come across this is how it is used — without it being specifically remarked upon. For example:
- This responsibility entails hard work.
- The new job entails regular travel.
- Motherhood entails sacrifice.
But some people use it in sentences like
- When I blush it does not entail that I am embarrassed.
- My lisp does not entail that I cannot be a good singer.
- I am old, but that does not entail that I am also hard of hearing.
Is the usage "… entail that…" grammatically correct?
Best Answer
It's not "entail that" per se, but it is a grammatically correct construct.
"That I am a bad singer" is a kind of declarative content clause, also conveniently called a that-clause. These clauses can be used as direct objects for a number of verbs, and entail happens to be one of them. Blocking out the sentence structure as [Subject] [Verb] [Object], we have:
In this structure, that can usually be omitted:
Personally I wouldn't (and this example looks odder than most), but I do tend to keep words others would elide out.