grammatically speaking...

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:34 PM -0800 1/6/03, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
>>1) You open us your heart
>>2) You open to us your heart
>>3) You open your heart to us
>>
>>Which is the best (grammatically speaking)?
>
>#3
>
>#2 sounds like a translation from a language like French, which
>places the object

the pronominal object, anyway

>before the subject.

I think you mean before the verb, not the subject.  But then it  (=
Vous nous ouvrez votre coeur.) isn't quite analogous to #2, which
would have to be the ungrammatical "Vous ouvrez nous votre coeur".  I
guess I'm not sure what you mean by the allusion to French.

>
Actually #2 would be OK in English if the object were "heavy" or long enough:

"You open to us your most generous and loving heart."

or even as it stands now, providing there's enough implicit contrast
or drama involved:

"You open to us...(ta-da)...your HEART!"

(with the utterance of the object accompanied by the appearance of a
large pulsing heart projected on an immense IMAX screen).

larry