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Originally Posted by Casiopea OK, so how do speakers use that "rule" to create novel utterances? Temico pointed out that ?"I need my son spanking" doesn't work in the same way as "I need my shirts ironing", which tells us that animate objects, like 'my son', 'you', and 'Max' don't work in that context. If I want to use the structure you've shown us, how should I use it; i.e., what is the rule or rules? Please note, every language, even idiolect, and regional variation has rules, both standard and non-standard.
In short, here's what I am hoping to gain from this discussion, what's the rule, or rather how do speakers use "I need X -ing?"  |
Temico hasn't shown us anything. There are lots of sentences in both standard and nonstandard English were the structure in each is parallel to the another, but the semantics are different.
Take:
The report is waiting on your desk.
A prescripitivist is waiting in your office.
We all know that, in normal-worlds, reports cannot wait, so how do we resolve the use in the sentence above? We use logic. Same in:
I need my shirt ironing.
I need my son spanking.
We know that son's can be spanked or give a spank to another person. Likewise, we know that a shirt can be ironed, but not give ironing to another object or itself.
The semantic and pragmatic "rule" is based on understanding the use of figurative speech and avoiding being explicit. The syntactic rule is as it is:
noun/pronoun + need/want/desire (more formal), etc. + possessive pron. + noun phrase (obj.) + verb/gerund..
Laters.