Re: shifting usage of "want"

2008/4/16, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>:
> Rene:
>  <<
>  Some kind of dirty shortcut, if you ask me.
>  >>
>
>  A dirty shortcut indeed!  Wow, what fascinating examples!
>  You know what would be interesting is some examples that
>  are ungrammatical, if you can dream some up.
Well, to be honest, they all sound quite ungrammatical to me, except
the original usage where "want" is followed by a complete main clause.

>  So here are some things to test:
>
> (4) /want/ followed by a full sentence
This is the original usage and is normally grammatical unless you make
different kinds of mistakes.

> (5) /want/ followed by a fully inflected verb phrase without the
> subject (e.g., "ate a big lunch" not "eaten a big lunch")
This is difficult to say because the web is full of abbreviated sentences.
Ellipsis of the subject happens often, not only in cases such as
"I was not there and could not help him" but also e.g.
"Am afraid I can't help him." This is of course a different phenomenon
and it is not always clear which phenomenon you're looking at in a
particular sentence.

Among the ones I found (in otherwise grammatical passages):

(5a)
Hij kon niet met ons meerijden want had andere verplichtingen.
He couldn't come along with us because had different obligations.

Ik heb het er heel moeilijk mee want had vroeger veel haar.
I'm finding it very difficult because used to have a lot of hair.

These "feel" like they're the showing the same phenomenon that
was present in the examples in my previous post.

(5b)
Deze keer wou ik op tijd zijn want had geen zin
  om zoals vorige week op de grond te zitten.
This time I wanted to be in time because didn't feel like
  sitting on the ground like last week.

This one looks like a combination of two phenomena:
the ellipsis we've seen in (5a) (which is slowly gaining popularity)
in combination with the error that ellipsis of the subject is *always*
disallowed in the second clause when the first clause has inversion
and the second clause hasn't.

Lastly:

(5c)
Daarna Darko die me zeker ook kon overtuigen,
  want had hem nog nooit zien draaien.
Then Darko who could certainly convince me,
  because had never seen him play music.

This seems to be (5a) too, but in combination with incorrect ellipsis.


> (6) /want/ followed by a noun
Hier scoorde ik pluspunten want vrouw.
I scored extra points here because woman.

This sounds identical to the case where just an adjective is used.
This is confirmed by the next example (from a newspaper site!):

Aanvankelijk leek Ella Kalsbeek in het bezit van de beste papieren,
  want vrouw en gedegen.
At first Ella Kalsbeek seemed to have the best papers,
  because woman and reliable.


> (7) /want/ followed by an adverb (all three kinds)
The only thing I could imagine gaining ground would be something like:

(7a) (unattested)
John ran the race best because most quickly.

But this would be camouflaged in Dutch because adverbs like these have
the same form as adjectives. I've not been able to find any examples.

Could you give examples of the other two kinds of adverbs used in this
construction? I can't imagine any other form to be grammatical.



René

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