English Language & Usage Asked by Lucrecia on December 11, 2020
I strongly need someone’s help to solve this problem of grammaticality:
I have to say why these examples are ungrammatical.
In relation to this, we have the grammatical counterparts.
I am blocked because I think it is not a problem of subjacency, since it is only one bounding node being crossed (book). Maybe it is a problem of the type of verb, or maybe it deals with the issue of the relative clause [that the children should read].
Which book did you make the suggestion that the children should read? means the same as Which book did you suggest that the children should read? However, the longer version requires make to have two uncoordinated direct objects, one being the suggestion, the other, which book. English grammar doesn’t allow that.
Answered by Barrie England on December 11, 2020
This is a long convoluted sentence, so it makes things easier if you turn it down to simpler things.
? Which book did you make the suggestion that the children should read?
It might go two ways:
You made the suggestion that the children should read a book.
or
You made the suggestion for/of a book that the children should read.
The latter sounds to me like the correct interpretation: a suggestion was made about a book (which the children should read).
So I find the better full question is where the 'wh-' placeholder is for 'suggest for' not 'read'. So the better sounding questino would be:
For which book did you make the suggestion that the children should read?
or
Which book did you make the suggestion for that the children should read?
(but if you're making convoluted sentences like that the phrase-final preposition is probably stylistically unwanted).
Answered by Mitch on December 11, 2020
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