grammatically speaking...

[Tom Kysilko]

At 01:13 PM 1/7/2003 -0500, Joanne M. Despres wrote:
>Could the "explain me what you mean" construction be a calque on
>"explique-moi..."?
>Maybe it is grammatically incorrect, at least within this context; on
>the other hand, personal pronouns are sometimes used as datives
>in English, as in the expressions, "send me an e-mail," "drop me a
>line," "write me when you get back," etc.  I guess those analogous
>examples led me to think of the syntactic structure of sentence #1
>as theoretically possible, or at least not wholly unprecedented,
>though in practice never used by native English speakers with this
>particular verb.

How about "Open me a beer."

--Tom Kysilko

   Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
   pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA