Those pesky negatives (revisited)

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:14 AM -0400 8/11/04, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>Laurence Horn writes:
>
>         >>>
>
>"You want not to turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
>"You wanna not turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
>"You don't wanna turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
>
>the first again seems too high-register, the neg-raised version at
>the bottom seems not to (seems to not?) carry the right sense of
>"want", and the middle, infinitive-splitting one again seems fine.
>
>         <<<
>
>Huh? Larry, I think you've been thinking about this too long and gotten
>scanted out. #3 is *it*; #2 is understandable but strange; and #1 is
>understandable but WEIRD.
>
>(All-purpose disclaimer: YMMV.)
>
Well, mine does.  I don't neg-raise with this particular "want", so
#3 would be a report on the addressee's desires rather than an
instruction to wait before turning.  I'm sure others share your
intuition on this, though.

But in any event there are contexts, with any sense of "want", when
the lower-clause negative is used because it's stronger than the
"raised" negative, in which case the choice would be between "want
not to" and "wanna not", of which I would tend in informal speech to
opt for the latter.  Michael Quinion just sent me off list a bunch of
attested "V to not" from literary sources (always, he notes, in a
colloquial context), including

"I wanted you to not go away."
(A Girl Of The Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter)

Note here that "I didn't want you to go away" would be perfectly
acceptable, but it would tend to convey a milder desire on the
speaker's part than the above version.  And "I wanted you not to go
away" would be similar to the above version, but higher register and
therefore somewhat less natural.

larry