Who do you wanna come?

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Mon May 18, 2009 10:58 pm

Who do you wanna come?

Do you see any problems with this sentence?

Thanks

José

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:05 am

If I recall correctly, this is sometimes given as proof for the reality of transformations.

The original untransformed version might be viewed as "You want who to come?", and this invisible "who" blocks the contraction of wanna, making the sentence given by the OP sound very odd.

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:09 am

There wouldn't be any problem with "Do you wanna come?", but you wouldn't say "I wanna you come". The "who" in your sentence represents an object that has been moved from in between the main verb and the infinitive.

The question "What do you wanna do?" is pretty common. If I heard someone say your sentence, I would suspect they were not a native English speaker.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:25 am

Sorry, but what's so odd about whodyawannacome (as spoken fast, and written a bit more phonetically)? Probably the main reason that José's sentence seems odd is that the current conventions of writing don't represent spoken contractions that well, but that hasn't stopped someone (and won't stop others possibly) from bunging in the 'wanna' (for whatever effect), which looks out of place by itself (but like I say, does it sound it, in a fully-contracted sentence).

But then, (T-)G grammar has always begged questions (assuming your recollection is right, Woody)!

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue May 19, 2009 3:41 am

I can't make the spoken contraction sit nicely on my ears. (Especially if you put it in context and say "So, you're having a party tomorrow" first).

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Tue May 19, 2009 4:00 am

Imagine if the context were, you have parties often, and I asked, 'Who do you like to come (to your parties)?'. No problem there, surely? And the initial 'Who...' makes it clear that we aren't asking about you yourself wanting or liking to come/go wherever (which IMHO rather makes the existence or non-existence of a "trace who" rather academic/silly...unless of course this is a case of changing "complete" tack: 'Who (wants to come)... > do you want to come?'. But you don't see me arguing for apparatus or procedures by which we "could" measure every half-thought a person might "have" let alone "utter"!).

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Tue May 19, 2009 2:56 pm

I saw the sentence in a book on language acquisition (Generative school) called Language Acquisition the Growth of Grammar by Maria Teresa Guasti, and she states that no child acquiring English would abstract (3) from (1) and (2):

(1) a. Who do you wanna invite?
b. Who do you want to invite?

(2) a. When do you wanna go out?
b. When do you want to go out?

(3) a. *Who do you wanna come?
b. Who do you want to come?

As a non-native speaker I thought that was categorical to state so.

The "who" in your sentence represents an object that has been moved from in between the main verb and the infinitive.

Please allow me a little correction ouyang; according to Guasti in (1) and (2) who and when are the object of the respective verbs, so want to is allowed to contract, so in deep-structure we have:

(4) You want to invite who?
(5) You want to go out when?

And in (6) who is the subject of the infinitival phrase to come so want does not merge with to because there is the subject that blocks it, even though it is moved afterwards.

(6) You want [who [to come]]?

Surely the whole phrase is the object of want and in this sense who is object of want.

And yes Fluffy it is rather theoretical/academic discussing trace and stuff, I just posted the question because now I have another question, how to teach it without going for this too abstract thing?

José

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Tue May 19, 2009 6:58 pm

One way out of all the silliness might be to simply use 'somebody' in place of 'who' in "deep structure" such as 'You want to invite who?' (the "DS" with 'who?' is <GASP> functionally marked/hardly canonical, but canonical or mentalesey or propositional or logico-equational or whatever is what I thought DS was mainly (meant to be) like).

The question I have to ask José is what you mean by teach "it" - theoretical linguistics or the English language? Some of what the so-called Generativists especially say doesn't occur actually does, and some of what they say does meanwhile doesn't. The best thing probably would be to continue to consult empirical sources and to depend on linear, real-time production and processing more - of verbs, arguments etc: WHO wantS to go? (Do YOU know?) vs. Do YOU want to go? vs. WHO do YOU want to go? (Do YOU want WOODY to go LOL?) etc etc. (The CAPS aren't representing prosody so much as the arguments of the verbs). Any speaker/student of the actual language who can't understand what basic sentences such as these mean is probably not going to (be able to) profit from a transformational-generative account either (in addition to whatever "failed" methods they might've already been taught with).*

I've started re-reading Sampson's Empirical Linguistics and was struck by one way he'd made a by now familiar point: 'If we have descriptions based on observation, why would we be interested in (the) intutions?' (See end of second paragraph at top of page 4 via Google Book Search; the Introduction at least is pretty accessible and "fun" reading).
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zVm3 ... A11-IA4,M1

Maybe I am not smart enough, but I quickly lose patience with Generative arguments - they just seem to muddy the functional waters, and are ultimately all designed to prove that babies "acquire" languages effortlessly, which isn't much use when you've got teenagers or adults hell-bent on Popperian experimentation and hypothesis-testing with their hard-won conscious knowledge.

*I refrain from doing/presenting anything remotely transformational. The only time I ever used anything like them was right at the beginning of my TEFL career, in China: I'd been asked to take on and try to teach a private student (more or less for free, as a favour), so I decided on a kernel (probably something like 'You are Mrs Wang'), did the ol' Yes-No inversion ('Are you Mrs Wang?'), then the Wh- thingummybob ('Who are you?'). I was going to depend upon intonation, expression, gesture, the addition of softeners like 'Excuse me, but...?' for the questions, etc, but it soon become painfully obvious after the Y/N inversion that my approach was confusing, inhumane, insane even. I bet that poor old Mrs Wang wondered how the hell I could have ever claimed to be an English teacher! We agreed to part company and not offer or take further lessons, and I recall being a bit miffed about the failure of the approach - surely she was just a bit slow, or impatient, or rude? But deep down I knew that lumping structures together like that just didn't make functional sense, and that the methods and beliefs (not that I believed in that method - it was purely a convenience, a means to "prepare" quickly on my part, due to lack of time and materials) of the teacher had to take second place to what the student would find more amenable. So the only thing I nowadys suggest in the form of transformations is the concept of "node" - that students can perhaps gain some insight into English word order by aligning linear sentences one below the other according to any identical words that they might contain (provided they write neatly into the center of spaces on lined paper divided into an equal number of columns, say 8 across an A4 lined sheet), although the main use of KWICs is generally collocational than to study potentially quite widely dispersed variations in wider word order/grammatical structure.

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:24 pm

The question I have to ask José is what you mean by teach "it" - theoretical linguistics or the English language?

This arguably phenomenon of the English language (whether when one has to contract want to or not).

Some of what the so-called Generativists especially say doesn't occur actually does, and some of what they say does meanwhile doesn't.

Although I subscribe to the Generative theory this is something that really bothers me and I totally agree with you. Much of the criticism on Generativists is (some of them) disregard of the real world, as a friend of mine puts it 'you draw trees, postulates deep and superficial structure and anything alien to this goes to the pragmatic garbage' and yes he was criticising Generativism.

Sampson's Empirical Linguistics...I'll check it out, there might be a copy at the university.

Maybe I am not smart enough, but I quickly lose patience with Generative arguments - they just seem to muddy the functional waters, and are ultimately all designed to prove that babies "acquire" languages effortlessly, which isn't much use when you've got teenagers or adults hell-bent on Popperian experimentation and hypothesis-testing with their hard-won conscious knowledge.

Hard core generativists are really difficult to argument with, as I said, I subscribe to this theory but I do really reckon all the external world and what goes around us, not only “perfect” sentences in lines like “I believe Fluffy to hate Chomsky.”

MrPedantic · Post by **MrPedantic** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:42 pm

Metamorfose wrote:she states that no child acquiring English would abstract (3) from (1) and (2):

(3) a. *Who do you wanna come?
b. Who do you want to come?

I'm startled by the asterisk. Guasti's argument is interesting; but I would have thought that speakers who tend to contract "want to" in ordinary "want + to-infinitive" constructions would do so here as well, despite the grammatical distinction, simply from force of habit.

MrP

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Tue May 19, 2009 9:16 pm

Oops, I forgot to add the GBS link - I've edited my above post and added it. (I've also added quite a bit about teaching "transformations").

José, Sampson's The 'Language Instinct' Debate makes for more compelling reading than his Empirical Linguistics. You've probably browsed the following thread before, but I thought I should mention it again for the quotes it contains from TLID, its sublinks (to GBS, LL etc), as well as the interesting discussion there generally:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 7225#37225

An interesting "corpus-inspired" JD forums thread that also mentions Sampson's work (but note that the AL link that I supply in it is to the same thread as mentioned just above):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=68365

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Tue May 19, 2009 10:27 pm

Please allow me a little correction ouyang; ... who is the subject of the infinitival phrase to come ... Surely the whole phrase is the object of want and in this sense who is object of want.

If it's a subject and not an object, why is the objective case used and not the subjective case? (accusative and nominative cases for you know who)

"I want him and her to come my party."

In days gone by, you would have been corrected for not asking, "Whom do you wanna come?".

At most, it's a pseudo-subject of a pseudo-clause. Non-finite clauses do not satisfy the definition of a clause. In the sentence, "The sheriff wants Billy dead or alive." is "Billy" a subject? I consider "to come" to be an object complement, like predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. I invented the term "predicate verbal" to account for it.

I don't expect linguistics students and teachers to adopt my views over established ones, and I welcome small and major corrections, which I regularly need. However, I grammatically analyze (color-code) new sentences every day, and I have grown increasingly confident that non-finite clauses do not form direct objects in the same way that finite clauses do.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue May 19, 2009 11:48 pm

So some of you really hear nothing strange in "Who do you wanna come?". Even a little strangeness is perhaps enough for the explanation.

To me it sounds even worse than "She wanna come", where you would leave out an S if you were a standard English speaker.

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Wed May 20, 2009 2:40 am

If it's a subject and not an object, why is the objective case used and not the subjective case? (accusative and nominative cases for you know who)

Whithin the grammar school that I follow it is subject of the infinitival to come and the whole infinitival clause is the object of want (according to the generative program, Government and Biding theory, a subject is the specifier of a Verbal Phrase and then it is moved anywhere according to the language.)

The sheriff wants Billy dead or alive.

[The sheriff wants [Billy dead or alive]]

According to GB (Government and Biding) the phrase [Billy dead or alive] is a small clause and Billy is the subject of the small clause, which by it's turn, is the object (or external argument) of the verb want.

The sheriff wants him dead or alive.

According to Andrew Radford in Transformational Syntax page 324:

"Traditionally, it is often said that nominative case is assigned to an NP which is the subject of its clause. However, this is innacurate, as we see from the following paradigm:

(1) I think that he will read the book. (* I think that him will read the book.)

(2) I want him to read the book (* I want he to read the book)

We see from (1) and (2) above that the subject of the read-clause is assigned nominative case in (1) and not in (2). How come?"

He goes on explaining that the subject of untensed clauses receive what he calls objective case (or accusative).

I said subject and "corrected" you because of the theoretical line I am following and analysing the original sentence, this will vary from theory to theory.

At most, it's a pseudo-subject of a pseudo-clause. Non-finite clauses do not satisfy the definition of a clause. In the sentence, "The sheriff wants Billy dead or alive." is "Billy" a subject? I consider "to come" to be an object complement, like predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. I invented the term "predicate verbal" to account for it.

I don't expect linguistics students and teachers to adopt my views over established ones, and I welcome small and major corrections, which I regularly need. However, I grammatically analyze (color-code) new sentences every day, and I have grown increasingly confident that non-finite clauses do not form direct objects in the same way that finite clauses do.

Indeed, maybe we only give different names for the same phenomenon. For students of English it won't matter, for us, it is nice to see different analyses for the same phenomenon.

PS: Fluffy don't hate me for that

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Wed May 20, 2009 2:55 am

I refrain from doing/presenting anything remotely transformational. The only time I ever used anything like them was right at the beginning of my TEFL career, in China: I'd been asked to take on and try to teach a private student (more or less for free, as a favour), so I decided on a kernel (probably something like 'You are Mrs Wang'), did the ol' Yes-No inversion ('Are you Mrs Wang?'), then the Wh- thingummybob ('Who are you?'). I was going to depend upon intonation, expression, gesture, the addition of softeners like 'Excuse me, but...?' for the questions, etc, but it soon become painfully obvious after the Y/N inversion that my approach was confusing, inhumane, insane even. I bet that poor old Mrs Wang wondered how the hell I could have ever claimed to be an English teacher! We agreed to part company and not offer or take further lessons, and I recall being a bit miffed about the failure of the approach - surely she was just a bit slow, or impatient, or rude? But deep down I knew that lumping structures together like that just didn't make functional sense, and that the methods and beliefs (not that I believed in that method - it was purely a convenience, a means to "prepare" quickly on my part, due to lack of time and materials) of the teacher had to take second place to what the student would find more amenable. So the only thing I nowadys suggest in the form of transformations is the concept of "node" - that students can perhaps gain some insight into English word order by aligning linear sentences one below the other according to any identical words that they might contain (provided they write neatly into the center of spaces on lined paper divided into an equal number of columns, say 8 across an A4 lined sheet), although the main use of KWICs is generally collocational than to study potentially quite widely dispersed variations in wider word order/grammatical structure.

I make the best use I can from transformational grammar for my understanding of English and the notion of grammar in general, I use transformations for yes-no questions (rememeber that in my case everybody speaks the same mother tongue, so it's much easier for me to scratch some abstraction) and the other day I had to use it to explain relative clauses (in this case the student quite like structural approach to language teaching so be it).

About your ordeal...let's say that when I started teaching I didn't have the same command of English as I have now (and I am really aware I need more, not to communicate but to teach), coming back my English was quite poor and I got the most horrendous questions a novice and unknowledgeable teacher should get, well let's say this is part of our growth

Could you elaborate more on this node concept please? (I like the idea)

Thanks

José