Want I should?

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:23 PM -0400 8/13/07, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>I'm curious where or in what group "want I should" is spoken and
>>>from, as in
>>>"You want I should come over?" I found the link below that says
>>>it's from
>>>Yiddish. (BTW, is this "Ben" on the ads-list?)
>>>
>>>http://positiveanymore.blogspot.com/2006/03/you-want-i-should-grow-
>>>beard.html
>>
>>wonderful, wonderful comments.  i think i might do a Language Log
>>posting on "if it sounds german, it's yiddish (and from new york city)".
>>
>>by the way, "want" plus finite clause (rather than infinitival)
>>complement could trace back to a number of different substrate
>>languages, not just germanic ones, since 'want'-verb plus finite
>>clause is very widespread.
>
>But in this case one would like to account for the "should", I
>suppose. One might speculate that it is a 'naive translation' of
>German "sollen" (or some Germanic-language equivalent). In what
>likely non-Germanic languages would the equivalent clause naturally
>include a word which would likely be 'translated' as "should"? [Could
>be many of them for all I know ....]
>
>However, I wonder why the construction should be assumed to be
>adopted from a foreign language at all. Maybe it's just old-fashioned
>or currently-unfashionable English, or dialectal English from the old
>days. English is Germanic, right?
>
>I find a number of published examples of "want [that] I should" etc.,
>going back quite a ways. E.g., at Google Books, from 1794 [looks
>genuine too!]: <<But in this I will say no more, as you do not want I
>should reason, but merely state facts.>>
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
And as has been long recognized, the "want...should" does pop up when
the two are rescued from contiguity, as in pseudo-clefts:

What I want is that you leave immediately.
What you want is apparently not that I should reason, but merely state facts.

So I agree that it's not as un-English as it sounds.

LH

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