hope someone to ....
Ray
Is the following grammatical?
1. I hope someone to answer my question.
I'd appreciate your help.
Ray
Mark Brader
> Is the following grammatical?
> 1. I hope someone to answer my question.
2. I hope someone *will* answer my question.
3. I hope *that* someone *will* answer my question.
4. I *need* someone to answer my question.
5. I *want* someone to answer my question.
6. I *would like* someone to answer my question.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Well, I'm back", he said.
m...@vex.net -- Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
My text in this article is in the public domain.
CyberCypher
Not in AmE. "I hope that someone will answer my question" or "I
{want / would like} someone to answer my question" is idiomatic
American usage. However, BrE speakers like using the "to"-infinitive
structure, so it just may be acceptable colloquial BrE.
It's also possible that it's derived from "I hope for someone to
answer my question", something that I would probably never say and
definitely never write, but this is probably a common regionalism in
the US.
Nick
> On Jun 17, 11:14 am, Ray <raymondaliasapoll...@yahoo.com.tw> wrote:
>> HI,
>>
>> Is the following grammatical?
>>
>> 1. I hope someone to answer my question.
>>
>> I'd appreciate your help.
>
> Not in AmE. "I hope that someone will answer my question" or "I
> {want / would like} someone to answer my question" is idiomatic
> American usage. However, BrE speakers like using the "to"-infinitive
> structure, so it just may be acceptable colloquial BrE.
It's not! It would be as:
I'd like someome to answer my question.
but if you want the "hope" in there, you need:
I hope someone can/will/might answer my question.
But "Can anyone help, please?" would be more ideomatic in informal use.
> It's also possible that it's derived from "I hope for someone to
> answer my question", something that I would probably never say and
> definitely never write, but this is probably a common regionalism in
> the US.
>
>
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu
contrex
> BrE speakers like using the "to"-infinitive
> structure, so it just may be acceptable colloquial BrE.
How can you write that and at the same time purport to know about
English?
CyberCypher
I don't purport to know much about idiomatic English of the oriental
variety (eastern coast of the pond), but I do know something about
American and International English. Where did you see any claim of
mine that I am a speaker of or expert on BrE? Aren't you jumping at
spectres of your own devise here?
How can you assume that all the brands of English are similar enough
to be "known" by anyone (except, of course, for limited standards in
which expressions such as "just between you and I" are considered
solecisms and idiotisms rather than acceptable idioms used by educated
writers -- no apologies to the entertaining writer and linguist
Geoffrey K. Pullum and his co-perp Rodney Huddleston, both of whom
are, IMHO, unacceptably tendentious in their outré politically correct
descriptivism), especially unknown (to me) posters who imply by their
outrage that they "know about English" well enough never to make a
hedged statement that turns out to be not the case? What would you
expect a rational American to think about a dialect in which people
live "in a street" instead of "on a street" and in which "knock me up"
means "wake me up by knocking on my door" instead of "inseminate me to
(the point of) conception"?
You aren't a mathematician, by any chance, are you?
And just what is wrong with what I said? You aren't going to deny that
BrE speakers like using the "to"-infinitive structure, I hope. That
would be false.
I didn't say that it *was* acceptable in colloquial BrE, just that it
*may be* -- which implies, of course, that I don't know. You do know
the difference, I suppose, between a hedged conditional and an
outright definite claim.
In any case, unless you're simply being pointlessly argumentative
because my sentence put your childhood knickers in a twist, you ought
to be well aware that there are myriad posters here who claim
expertise in the language simply because their genomes first saw the
light of day in an anglophone political entity. For all I know, you
may belong to that tribe of expert primitives.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
Aren't you using "purport" in rather an odd way there? I don't usually
think of it as synonymous with "claim".
--
athel
James Hogg
quote:
My reaction too. The relevant OED definition is:
"Esp. of a document, picture, or object: (originally, without
implied doubt as to the validity of the claim) to seem; (in later
use) to profess or claim by its tenor, be intended to seem,
appear ostensibly to be or do something."
There is one quotation from 1918 used of a person:
"Somebody purporting to be a niece of hers talked to him."
That's from B. TARKINGTON Magnificent Ambersons. Is it a
Leftpondian sage?
--
James
Evan Kirshenbaum
I'm not sure I'd consider Tarkington a "sage", though Wikipedia says
he was born in Indianapolis and would therefore qualify as
Leftpondian.
But this sense of "purport" is certainly a Leftpondian usage.
MWCD11's definition is
1 : to have the often specious appearance of being, intending, or
claiming (something implied or inferred) <a book that purports to
be an objective analysis>; also : CLAIM <foreign novels which he
purports to have translated -- Mary McCarthy>
Looking at Google Books, I see it back to the nineteenth century:
Nevertheless the author dwells much upon that transition, of whose
results she purports to know nothing.
_The Churchman's Monthly Review_,
1844
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The bathwater, in this case, does
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |not appear to ever have contained
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |any baby.
|
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | ronniecat
(650)857-7572
CyberCypher
wrote:
> On 2009-06-17 23:47:05 +0200, contrex <mike.j.har...@gmail.com> said:
>
> > On 17 June, 05:46, CyberCypher <CyberCyp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> BrE speakers like using the "to"-infinitive
> >> structure, so it just may be acceptable colloquial BrE.
>
> > How can you write that and at the same time purport to know about
> > English?
>
> Aren't you using "purport" in rather an odd way there? I don't usually
> think of it as synonymous with "claim".
One of the meanings is "to profess". In any case, I was merely
mimicking the mathematician's numerical English.
Chuck Riggs
Hi, Franke. It's good to see you.
--
Regards,
Chuck Riggs,
who speaks AmE, lives near Dublin, Ireland
and usually spells in BrE