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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010Some wh-questions
Hello, everyone, Can you help me judge if the following (b) & (c) sentences are grammatical/acceptable? Thanks. --Ray (1) a. I can drink ten glasses of wine but still stay sober. b. How many glasses of wine can you drink but still stay sober? c. How can you drink ten glasses of wine but still stay? (2) a. I ate rice yesterday but drank milk today. b. What did you eat yesterday but drink milk today? c. What did you eat rice yesterday but drink today? In message <f4a07064-9106-46cf-9f28-248fa09090ea@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, cuteray <qrayhuang@gmail.com> writes >Hello, everyone, > >Can you help me judge if the following (b) & (c) sentences are >grammatical/acceptable? Thanks. --Ray > >(1) a. I can drink ten glasses of wine but still stay sober. Fine - but I prefer a comma after "wine". > b. How many glasses of wine can you drink but still stay sober? Fine - but I prefer a comma after "drink". In both of these sentences, you could replace "but" by "and" (meaning would be the same). > c. How can you drink ten glasses of wine but still stay? No good. Still stay what? >(2) a. I ate rice yesterday but drank milk today. Fine - but I prefer a comma after "yesterday". > b. What did you eat yesterday but drink milk today? Maybe nearly OK with a comma. Do you mean "What did you eat yesterday, but drink milk today?" The "but" should really be an "and". > c. What did you eat rice yesterday but drink today? No good. Did you mean "What did you eat yesterday? Rice? And what did you drink today?" Or... "Did you eat rice yesterday? What did you drink today?" Or... "What did you eat? Rice, yesterday? And drink, today?" Note that these are not examples of good English grammar, but it might be how people speak in a conversation.  SignatureIan > In message > <f4a07064-9106-46cf-9f28-248fa09090ea@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, > cuteray <qrayhuang@gmail.com> writes >> b. What did you eat yesterday but drink milk today? > Maybe nearly OK with a comma. Do you mean "What did you eat yesterday, > but drink milk today?" The "but" should really be an "and". I never expect to hear a question like that from a native speaker of English. Much more natural would be something like this: "You will drink milk today, but what did you eat yesterday?" The first clause is declarative. Only the second clause is a question. Even this sentence seems a bit strange, though, because drinking and eating are two different things. It's almost as bad as this: "You are wearing a red dress today, but what did you eat yesterday?" The two parts are unrelated to each other. You'd be much more likely to hear sentences like these: "You are drinking milk today, but what did you drink yesterday?" "You ate rice yesterday, but what will you eat today?" Bill in Kentucky > In message > <f4a07064-9106-46cf-9f28-248fa09090ea@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > In both of these sentences, you could replace "but" by "and" (meaning > would be the same). Yes; to my ear "and" sounds the more natural. > > c. How can you drink ten glasses of wine but still stay? > No good. Still stay what? Must be "How can you drink ... wine but/and still stay sober?" > >(2) a. I ate rice yesterday but drank milk today. > Fine - but I prefer a comma after "yesterday". > > > b. What did you eat yesterday but drink milk today? > Maybe nearly OK with a comma. Do you mean "What did you eat yesterday, > but drink milk today?" The "but" should really be an "and". That still doesn't work: the "what" has been disconnected from the second clause by the provision of an object for "drink" -- _viz_ "milk" -- in other words the expanded second half of the parallelism "What did you drink milk today?" makes no sense. "What did you eat yesterday, but drink today?" sounds more like a riddle than a sincere question -- but I suppose the person addressed might have put yesterday's leftover fruit in the blender to make a cocktail. Another possible variation, with a completely different intent, is "Why did you eat yesterday but (only) drink milk today?" The only way I can see to fix the sentence with punctuation alone is "What, did you eat yesterday but drink milk today?" -- colloquial, where "what" is an expression of surprise or disbelief that can be construed as an ellipsis for something like "What did you say?" or "What do you mean?" > > c. What did you eat rice yesterday but drink today? > No good. This is actually the same problem as in version b, just more obvious because the collision between "what" and "rice" occurs in the first clause. Here also "why" (or "where") could be substituted for "what". > Did you mean "What did you eat yesterday? Rice? And what did you > drink today?" Or... "Did you eat rice yesterday? What did you drink > today?" Or... "What did you eat? Rice, yesterday? And drink, today?" > Note that these are not examples of good English grammar, but it > might be how people speak in a conversation. The examples preceding your second "Or..." seem grammatical enough to me, although in the first one I'd rather write "What did you eat yesterday: rice?" SignatureOdysseus > Hello, everyone, > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > b. What did you eat yesterday but drink milk today? > c. What did you eat rice yesterday but drink today? The (a) sentences are of course OK, both examples of Conjunction Reduction with conjoined clauses having identical subjects ("I") and head verbs ("can"). CR deletes the identical words in the second clause, leaving both of them as Verb Phrases under "can". (1)b is OK because the wh-questioned Noun Phrase is extracted from the first clause but not the second, since it doesn't refer to wine but to staying sober. (1)c is bad because "how" isn't an appropriate wh-word for "sober" in this construction; "How can he stay?" does not elicit the answer "sober". (2)b-c are terrible, because they violate the Coordinate Structure Constraint, which says you can't extract a chunk of one coordinate clause and move it to somewhere else in the sentence but leave another coordinate clause alone. Viz: *What did Bill wash ___ and sweep the floor? *What did Bill wash the dishes and sweep ___? (both from 'Bill washed the dishes and swept the floor') The CSC is one of the Ross Constraints, discovered by Haj Ross in his 1967 MIT PhD dissertation 'Constraints on Variables in Syntax', probably the most-cited dissertation in 20th-century syntax, usually known simply as Ross 1967. See http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/ross.html for more than you probably wanted to know about Ross Constraints. (Remember, you asked) -John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/McCawley.pdf "MIT is a place where the Mind Fairy comes and leaves a quarter under your pillow." -- James D. McCawley |
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