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  1. How do you expect a debate on the green new deal between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to go?

Or

  1. How do you expect a debate on the green new deal to go between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

  2. Other better ways?

choster
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Sid
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    #1 is okay. #2 is not. #3: How do you expect a Green New Deal debate between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to go? – Tinfoil Hat Apr 26 '21 at 17:45
  • " a debate on the green new deal between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez" is a very long noun phrase which is the object of the verb "expect", "to go" is not part of this noun phrase so should not be inserted into it. It is for this reason that, as @TinfoilHat says, #2 is incorrect. – BoldBen Apr 26 '21 at 19:53
  • (2) is an example of the English syntactic rule Extraposition from NP, and it's completely grammatical. – John Lawler Apr 26 '21 at 22:14
  • @JohnLawler: It is grammatical, but it reads as if go means fit rather than turn out. Compare How do you expect a debate to go [fit] between* M and A?* and How do you expect a debate to go [turn out]* between M and A?* – Tinfoil Hat Apr 26 '21 at 22:52
  • All English written sentences are multiply ambiguous, and there's nothing one can do about it, except trust the reader, and don't throw too many obstacles in their way. – John Lawler Apr 26 '21 at 23:05
  • First, it's called the "Green New Deal," a proper noun that is a callback to FDR's "New Deal" and so requires capitalization of first letters. Having gotten that out of the way, I'd say that 1 is preferable to 2 because 2 is mismodified. 2 may make it sound as though the debate isn't between MTG and AOC but is somehow itself going or traveling between them. That's because the prepositional phrase starting with "between" appearing immediately after "go" makes it appear to adverbially modify "go" instead of adjectivally modifying "debate," like it does in 1. – Benjamin Harman Apr 27 '21 at 01:51

1 Answers1

-1

In the first sentence, "to go" appears to be somewhat far away from "expect". I wouldn't use that construction; as I see it, this is a matter of style, not really of incorrect grammar.

The second sentence is not correct grammatically¹.

Here is one construction that seems to be more direct and that has the advantage of not using "between" after "to go", thus eliminating the possible idea that "between" is associated with "to go" rather than "debate" (although this latter case appears readily enough to be the only choice).

  • How do you expect Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would debate with one another on the green new deal?

In this last formulation above, the idea of how the debate would turn out has been rather slighted, and so the next options could be found to be better.

  • How would turn out a debate between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the green new deal? What do you expect?

  • How would turn out a debate on the green new deal between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? What do you expect? (For the uninformed, the deal could be interpreted as being between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which the writer or speaker might want to avoid.)

¹Correction due to user BoldBen

LPH
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    'How do you expect would turn out a debate between ...' sound awful. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 26 '21 at 16:50
  • @EdwinAshworth If we take a corresponding affirmation, wouldn't we have to write something like "I expect a debate between X and Y would turn out to be a decent conversation."? It seems to me that this is a well established form; the contrary would surprise me. How, then, would you formulate the corresponding "how" question? – LPH Apr 26 '21 at 17:25
  • Move to the end: How do you expect [] a debate between M and A would turn out? – Yosef Baskin Apr 26 '21 at 18:56
  • @YosefBaskin For a short subject (just "debate") I see no objection, but given a long subject and a prepositional phrase that has also to be found before, isn't "would turn out" a bit far from "expect"? Let's take for instance this sentence: "How would speak someone who has never heard the sounds of the language and only read descriptions of them?"; the normal order is impossible, (but, "How does a toothless person speak?" is right and "How does speak a toothless person?" is wrong, I agree). – LPH Apr 26 '21 at 20:16
  • @LPH As I said in my comment on the question the phrase starting with "a debate" and ending with "Ocasio-Cortez" is a single, though admittedly long, noun phrase. The phrase "to go" has to follow the object, it can't be inserted into it. – BoldBen Apr 26 '21 at 20:21
  • @BoldBen I see that now; in the light of your remark, this second sentence does appear to be awkward. – LPH Apr 26 '21 at 20:43
  • I don't expect a sentence to end well starting out with "How do you expect would turn out." Maybe "What would you expect from a debate between ...?" – Yosef Baskin Apr 26 '21 at 20:54