want you not or do not want you to

[Hansman]

I want you not to go there. VS. I don't want you to go there.

I feel like they carry the same meaning. Is there any difference between them?

 

[tedmc]

Yes, but the first is used only in old English (as in Shakespearean era), not contemporary English.

 

[PeterCW]

Yes, but the first is used only in old English (as in Shakespearean era), not contemporary English.

PEDANT
Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English not Old English.
/PEDANT

I agree that the usage is correct but archaic.

 

[Tarheel]

I want you not to go there. VS. I don't want you to go there.

I feel like they carry the same meaning. Is there any difference between them?

Yes. The difference is one is a phrase that isn't used (the first one). The other is a phrase it is used.

 

[Annabel Lee]

The difference is one is a phrase that isn't used (the first one).

Sentences like the first are sometimes used for an emphatic touch, and, when they are used thus, not is heavily stressed.

I don't want you to tell the truth. [paraphrase: "I don't want you to be honest."]​

I want you NOT to tell the truth. [paraphrase: "I want you to be dishonest." / "I want you to lie."]​

 

[Annabel Lee]

Yes, but the first is used only in old English (as in Shakespearean era), not contemporary English.

I agree that the usage is correct but archaic.

I'm surprised at the sense that the less common usage here is archaic. Could it be that you guys are thinking of this as being like "She loves me. She loves me not.," where the second sentence is being used instead of the modern "She doesn't love me"?

If so, I would argue that we're not dealing with that type of case at all here. The not in I want you not to go there applies not to the main verb (want) but to the verb in the infinitival clause (to go there). In other words I want you not to go there is another way of saying I want you to not go there. Do you find that one archaic?

Notice that this type of thing, which some people call "neg raising," doesn't work with all verbs:

I chose not to go there.
I didn't choose to go there.

Those two don't have the same meaning, and there is nothing archaic, or even uncommon, about I chose not to go there.

 

[Hansman]

Sentences like the first are sometimes used for an emphatic touch, and, when they are used thus, not is heavily stressed.

I don't want you to tell the truth. [paraphrase: "I don't want you to be honest."]​

I want you NOT to tell the truth. [paraphrase: "I want you to be dishonest." / "I want you to lie."]​

Thank you so much.

I still feel like they carry the same meaning between "I don't want you to be honest" and "I want you to be dishonest." / "I want you to lie."

Is there any difference in meaning between them to you?

Thank you so much again.

 

[jutfrank]

I'm not sure what kind of answer you want. Annabel Lee has answered your question very well. What kind of meaning are you talking about? Logic? Or what the speaker is likely to be really saying?

The difference in logic lies in what's being negated.

a) I don't want you to be honest.
b) I want you not to be honest.

In a), I'm telling you something I don't want whereas in b) I'm telling you something I do want. Sentence a) is about the undesirabilty of you being honest whereas sentence b) is about the desirability of you being dishonest.

Now, in terms of speaker meaning, which is a very different kind of meaning, the difference could be this:

In a), I'm talking about me whereas in b), I'm talking about you. That is to say that sentence a) is about my desire and sentence b) is about your behaviour. It could be, for example, that b) is an instruction to you.

The difficulty with speaker meaning is that we need context for interpretation. It could be that two such sentences are actually identical—they could mean exactly the same thing.

Before you ask a follow-up question, get clear in your mind what kind of meaning you're asking about. If you want to know what a real speaker means, in a real situation, please give us some context. I've seen so many students (and teachers!) get hopelessly lost in sentence pairs like this when failing to make a distinction between different kinds of meaning.

 

[Tarheel]

Here is the question. If you are asking somebody to lie, why don't you just say that?