[Ads-l] Heard: "want _for_ you to do"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Dec 30 20:53:12 UTC 2016


For dekkids, I've had an inkling in the back of my thinking-cap that, at
some point in my life, perhaps when I was a child in Texas, I and the
people around me used the structure

"_want *for*_ [Noun Phrase] to Verb"

and not simply

"_want_ [Noun Phrase] to Verb"

But it was just a vague feeling and nobody around me now uses it and I
don't use it, even by mistake. It just pops into my head, from time to time.

I've just heard Dr. Phil, also a native of Texas, say,

"What I want _for_ you to do is to follow the plan that I'm going to set up
for you."

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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