difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

[Fujibei]

difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

Let's assume that I'm at home talking tomy wife. Since she appears to be tired from working all day, I would like totake her out for dinner instead of her cooking for us, and I say to her, 1."I suggest we eat out tonight." 2. "I suggest eating outtonight."

In this particular situation, is thereany difference in nuance and meaning between the two sentences?

 

[Rover_KE]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

Please correct the run-together pairs of words I've underlined. This often happens in text which has been cut and pasted – making me think you've asked this question on another forum. You can use Edit Post to insert spaces where necessary, followed by Save.

If there's any difference in nuance in meaning between them, your wife's not going to give a damn.

 

[Phaedrus]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

Is the speaker (the suggester) in (2) planning on being part of the eating out? If so, his sentence doesn't convey that at all.

When one suggests doing something to someone else, one is NOT suggesting that that person and oneself do that thing together.

For example: "I suggest going to bed early tonight. You need the rest. Pay no attention to me. I have to stay up late."

"I suggest going to bed early tonight" does NOT mean the same thing as "I suggest that we go to bed early tonight."

The grammatical situation doesn't change if you change "going to bed early tonight" to "eating out tonight."

making me think you've asked this question on another forum.

Yes.

 

[Phaedrus]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

That depends on the context.

That is an interesting point, which I grant. However, what do you suppose the default (unmarked) interpretation is?

"I suggest getting dressed."

Looking at that sentence in isolation, would any English speaker naturally suppose that the suggester was undressed?

 

[Phaedrus]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

No sentences exist in isolation - except in such books as dictionaries and grammar.

Fair enough. Let's look at it from a strictly syntactic standpoint, then.

Please understand that the reason I am playing hardball here is that (i) I find this topic intrinsically interesting and (ii) I am defending the answer I gave Fujibei elsewhere, before he started this thread, against his obvious skepticism.

If the default implied subject of a gerund clause complementing "suggest" in the simple present is the addressee(s), then we would expect the reflexive pronouns "yourself" and "yourselves" to be possible in that clause, and indeed they are:

(a) I suggest turning yourself in.
(b) I suggest turning yourselves in.

Both of those sentences are obviously correct. Any native speaker of English would agree with me. But what if we change the reflexive pronoun to "ourselves"? "Myself" is obviously ungrammatical. "Ourselves" seems so to me, too, but perhaps it barely slides by.

(c) *[strike]I suggest turning myself in.[/strike]
(d) *? I suggest turning ourselves in.

I think it is also worth noting that the following two are possible. The fact that the absence of the reflexive in these cases works is evidence that the implied subject of the gerund clause is not co-referent with the pronouns:

(e) I suggest turning me in.
(f) I suggest turning us in.

But contrast:

(g) *[strike]I suggest turning you in.[/strike]

None of this is to deny that an overt subject can be added to the gerund clause. But Fujibei didn't ask about the sentence "I suggest our eating out tonight," which does mean the same thing as "I suggest that we eat out tonight"; he asked about "I suggest eating out tonight."

 

[Phaedrus]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

Both of those seem fine to me.

A context for the first could be a person wanted by the police for a crime he has not committed who is in hiding. He is talking to his wife. She has suggested that he try to escape to another country. He thinks it would be better if he turned himself in and stood trial.

I find (c) totally ungrammatical, even with your outlandish context. But thanks for trying.

But Fujibei provided a context in which the wife would almost certainly infer that her husband was suggesting going out together.

But Fujibei is a nonnative speaker. Do we really want to encourage him to use inappropriate grammar for expressing something that native speakers and his wife could tell he was trying to say on account of the context? If so, we might as well just encourage Fujibei to say to his wife "Restaurant?" That would do the job as well.

 

[jutfrank]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

If anyone cares, I would come down in agreement with both Phaedrus and Piscean on this.

I look at it more with a semantic, rather than syntactic analysis.

I suggest turning myself in. (I'm making a suggestion to myself.)

There's nothing ungrammatical about this. It just makes little/no sense because why would one make a suggestion to oneself? Of course, with enough imagination, you could come up with some bizarre scenario of a schizophrenic talking to himself, etc., but that's unlikely. Piscean's alternative context would also work (hence is grammatical), but is similarly unlikely, in my opinion.

I suggest turning me in. (I'm making a suggestion to you only.)

Obviously, the use of me clearly indicates that the suggested action is for you, not me. Still unlikely in context but grammatical all the same.

I suggest we turn ourselves in. (I'm making a suggestion for us.)

Obvious.

But when there is no pronoun to help with semantics, as with

I suggest eating out. (I'm making a suggestion.)

there's no clear indication of who the suggesting is directed at. It certainly could be at you only, but it also could be at us. Both are conceivable. But having said that, I guess it would be more likely, statistically, in most contexts, to mean only you. The reason I think this is that a) I imagine that most suggestions made are likely to be directed at only you (I have no evidence for this), and b) that if the meaning were us, then there would be used the more natural/likely form I suggest we eat out. Of course, in the context of the OP it clearly means us.

 

[Phaedrus]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

I suggest turning myself in. (I'm making a suggestion to myself.)

There's nothing ungrammatical about this. It just makes little/no sense because why would one make a suggestion to oneself?

I'm not sure one can be said meaningfully to make a suggestion to oneself, but one can certainly give oneself direct and indirect orders. I would venture to say that we all have experience of doing that in our mental life, and that, for all of us, in that case, "I" becomes "you." I can say to myself, "Get up. You're going to be late if you stay in bed much longer." Or I might say: "You need to get up now." Or I can use "I": "I need to get up." But if I use an imperative, I have to use the second person. Surely even Piscean would find the following orders ungrammatical:

(i) *[strike]Speak for myself.[/strike]
(ii) *[strike]Get myself dressed.[/strike]
(iii) *[strike]Sit myself down.[/strike]
(iv) *[strike]Buy myself some more time.[/strike]

In all of those cases, "myself" has to be changed to "yourself" in order for the sentence to work. Throughout the history of English grammar, all grammarians have agreed that the implied subject of imperatives is "you," which of course is sometimes explicit in the imperative, as it is in "You be quiet!" Piscean, I believe, has more grammars in his library than I do. I believe that he would find this point in all of them.

The case of "suggest V-ing" is probably not nearly as commonly dealt with. I haven't even bothered looking in Quirk or in Huddleston and Pullum for it, though I might. I suppose it is possible that they touch on this issue, which is specific to the present-simple tense usage of "suggest V-ing", a structure particular to the speech act of making a suggestion.

Fujibei's original question, which this forum has not seen, used the past tense: "I suggested eating out tonight." There are no problems with supposing that both Fujibei and his wife were included in the suggestion referred to in that past-tense sentence: "Was it you who suggested eating out tonight? I'm so glad we did."

Going back to the present simple, I didn't think that native speakers' intuitions on this point could diverge so widely. I feel as though Piscean is going into contortions to force something unnatural with *[strike]I suggest turning myself in[/strike], which I continue to find totally ungrammatical. I am on the fence about "I suggest turning ourselves in." Part of me finds it ungrammatical, and another part thinks judging it so might be going too far. What I am certain about is that I find it far better with an overt first-person plural possessive subject:

I suggest our turning ourselves in.

Surely we can all agree that the following are ungrammatical. If we can't, I won't be sure that we speak the same language.

(v) *[strike]I suggest turning himself in.[/strike]
(vi) *[strike]I suggest turning herself in.[/strike]
(vii) *[strike]I suggest turning themselves in.[/strike]

And surely we can agree that the following are grammatical, these being fixed by virtue of the overt possessive subject of the gerund clause.

(viii) I suggest his turning himself in.
(ix) I suggest her turning herself in.
(x) I suggest their turning themselves in.

 

[jutfrank]

Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."

1. "I suggest we eat out tonight."
2. "I suggest eating out tonight."

In this particular situation, is there any difference in nuance and meaning between the two sentences?

Going back to the OP:-

I would suggest (sorry) that one subtle but effective difference here is that by including a full clause of subject and predicate rather than just a gerund phrase, the former is more direct and persuasive. That is to say, more ... suggestive.