I suppose that maybe those who don't like the 'metaphysical' explanation (if I have understood it correctly at all) wonder why the trace of the 'whom' would left between the 'to' and the 'want'. But even if we add the 'whom' we won't be able to use 'wanna', will we? So 'whom' leaves a trace even when it is there?
If it's there, then there's no 'trace' to speak of.
@Holmes: The Chomskyan explanation makes a great deal of sense to me. I'd be interested to get a basic idea of what the possible objections to it might be. Also, I wonder what you mean by the word 'metaphysical'.
Hello, Navi and Jutfrank -- The idea behind the "trace" is that
whom, the relative pronoun of the relative clause
[whom] I want to help me, "starts out," deep-structurally, as the subject of the infinitive (
These are the people I want [whom] to help me) and then "moves" to the front of the relative clause, right after
people, leaving behind a trace of itself in its original position, a trace which severs the illusory contiguity of
want and
to in surface structure and prevents their contracting to each other in the informal contracted form
wanna.
I describe this explanation of the ungrammaticality of sentences like
*There are people I wanna help me and
*There are some people I wanna stay here as "metaphysical" simply because it appeals to movements that do not meet the eye or ear in speech or reading, as well as to linguistic residues which inhibit contraction as if the linguistic residues were some kind of dark matter in the mental realm which these theoretical movements and vacated syntactic positions inhabit.
There is a great deal of literature on the prohibition of
to-contraction in these types of cases and the question of whether it confirms the Chomskyan theory of "traces." I know of only one argument against it, but it is from Geoffrey Pullum himself. Pullum's article "
The Morpholexical Nature of English to-Contraction" proposes that forms like
wanna, gonna, oughta, supposta, hafta, etc. are formed by morphological rather than syntactic processes. Syntactically, he maintains, they (his "therapy verbs"
) simply take bare infinitival complements.
