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Marc and I were talking about this this morning and I need more opinions! Tell me about these sentences of English - do they work for you?

[Poll #974955]

Linguists, please maintain radio silence about this for a little bit till the data comes in. Just checking, that's all. :)

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Oh, okay, then I won't fill in the poll. :-) But if you want to see the paper I wrote on double direct objects and the dative in modern English, just give a yell. :-)

The use of the word lightning rather than lighting is what makes me say that the fourth question is a little hinky. If it was lighting rather than lightning it would be great. The last question is bad either way.

You will post the 'results', yes?

A couple of the sentences didn't make sense to me even with whatever you were controlling for. Why would there be lightning inside? And I couldn't make the donated money make sense—who donates money to one person? Why is it "the" money? So that threw me and I couldn't make that sentence seem right however it was arranged. I guess if it were "gave" then it would be fine either way.

The ones lacking prepositions (ie "She lowered John the box") remind me of German dative structures.

I filled in before reading the bit at the bottom, but tried to go with my instincts instead of what I know. Discount my answers if you want.

For the record, 'a little hinky' for me means that I'd probably say it, especially after spending a few days back home, but I wouldn't write it down anywhere but in a blogpost.

And my love for the word 'hinky' is a bit embarrassing.

Well, I tried to apply prescriptive grammar to these and be tough on them, but the sense came through on most of them, and by that standard, I guess even the "bad" ones are really hinky-but-okay.

Or maybe I just hang out with too many linguists. ;)

Polls like these make me omgnervous because I'm terrified I will look ignorant and foolish.

Clearly, I need to get out more. :))

I can't wait to hear the results!

*twitches*
Things like this make my English degree mind angsty.
I am interested in the results though

My main problem with the survey was having no idea what the word "hinky" means. Luckily, I can work out a sufficiently accurate meaning from the context. I find language generation very interesting, but from a strictly amateur standpoint (no English language teaching after the age of 12), so I shall keep quiet and eagerly await further postings.

Oh, I suppose I should ask if you need to know my answers to weed out contamination of the results by foreigners.

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