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In a video a native speaker of English said:

I gotta show you something... it is important. I need to show you it.

I am not a native speaker and this last sentence sounds extremely weird to me. I asked two English native speakers (both British), one of whom said it is okay and the other that it is wrong.

Is this grammatical? If not, is it about to become grammatical due to frequent use?

TRiG
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Emanuel
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  • It's fine. See tchrist's answer to a similar question. The alternative form is: I need to show it to you. – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 17:28
  • What do you mean by grammatical? – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 17:31
  • Can you provide a link to the video with a timecode to the passage in question? At the very least, can you say whether it's acted or 'wild'? – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 17 '12 at 17:31
  • @ tchrist: I thought this the way to express that something is compliant with grammatical rules... I read that a lot on SE @ StoneyB: it is somewhat acted thought not from professionals. I can provide a timecode, but I don't really see what difference this makes for a statement whether it is correct English or not... no offense :) – Emanuel Oct 17 '12 at 17:36
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    The “rule” is VERB INDIRECT-OBJECT DIRECT-OBJECT. How could that not fit the rule? – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 17:37
  • @Zairja. What do you mean, it is fine? Perhaps, as jwpat7 writes, it is heard in AE, but in British English it is still strange to hear "I'll show it you", whereas the other option is unheard of, as far as I know. And even the first option is something which is rather new, in fact in many grammar texts it is still considered totally ungrammatical (Swan mentions this option only in his most recent edition of "Practical English Usage"). – Paola Oct 17 '12 at 17:39
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    @Paola Where are you seeing "I'll show *it you"? If you meant "I'll show you it*", then I don't see any issue. Is there something wrong with saying "I'll bring you my work" or "I'll give her money"? – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 17:43
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    @Paola The rule is VERB IO DO. – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 17:43
  • @Zairja. I see it in jwpat7's answer. "I'll show you it" to me is a no-no. And obviously there's nothing wrong with "I'll give her money" because we're not talking of a sentence where the direct object is a pronoun. Ay, there's the rub. – Paola Oct 17 '12 at 17:55
  • @tchrist. That's precisely what I meant, but as far as I know that holds when the direct object is a noun, whereas the indirect one may also be a pronoun. When they are both pronouns in my opinion the correct structure is verb + DO + to + IO. – Paola Oct 17 '12 at 17:58
  • I don't exactly understand the down-vote... why? The debate here shows that it is not that clear a question after all. As for rules: English is not exactly the language that you can tackle with simple rules as it is quite prone to exceptions... – Emanuel Oct 17 '12 at 18:00
  • @Paola I understand your objection now, though I can't attest to whether or not it's founded. Do you have a source for your to-insertion? ;) – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 18:03
  • Ngrams seems to say that "show it you" used to be used in both American and British English, but is now archaic in American and nearly archaic in British, and that "show you it" was never and is not now used much. Looking at the hits for "show you it" and "show it you", most of the modern-day ones are spurious. – Peter Shor Oct 17 '12 at 18:06
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    Related and a possible duplicate: Is it incorrect to say, 'Give me it'? – RegDwigнt Oct 17 '12 at 18:10
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    @EVERYONE: Please first read this textbook on US–UK differences in IO/DO use. – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 18:10
  • @EVERYONE: Then look through these. – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 18:11
  • @RegDwight: indeed, that is about the same thing... thanks a lot for the reference :) – Emanuel Oct 17 '12 at 18:13
  • @Paula I am afraid you are mistaken. Give me it, get me it, bring me it, &c&c&c. – tchrist Oct 17 '12 at 18:13
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    I expect that "show me it" is only acceptable in some dialects of AmE. It sounds strange to me (but not quite as strange as "show it me"). Clearly, the right phrase to teach ESL students is "show it to me". – Peter Shor Oct 17 '12 at 18:16
  • could we settle for "it is technically ok but about to vanish" ?? I mean, if no one ever uses it, it will eventually be deemed wrong and the rule would be something like "Omitting 'to' is not possible if both objects are a pronoun" – Emanuel Oct 17 '12 at 18:17
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    @Emanuel: I suspect that "show it me" is about to vanish, but that "show me it" is increasing in frequency. From Ngrams, neither is very common at all, although "show it me" was common in the past. – Peter Shor Oct 17 '12 at 18:18
  • I've heard American-speakers say "I'll show you it" instead of "I'll show it to you". They were either little kids, totally tone deaf, patently uneducated, or consistently wearing one black shoe and one brown. It may be a regionalism where its defenders live, and they probably don't write it or say it any more than Pullum and Huddleston write and say "He gave it to John and I" despite their vigorous but wrongheaded CGEL defense, on specious grounds, of its idiomaticity and acceptability. –  Oct 17 '12 at 19:54

2 Answers2

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In American English, “I need to show it to you” is heard more commonly than is “I need to show you it”, which in AE has the same meaning. In British English, some may say “I need to show it you” to mean “I need to show it to you”, but I doubt you'd ever hear “I need to show you it”, even if it is you that is going to be shown to it.

An AE-corpus ngrams for show you it,show it you,show it to you vs. a BE-corpus ngrams for the same phrases illustrates, as Peter Shor said in comments, that show it you is rarely used in AE. Its use peaked in the early 1800's. The form is becoming rare in BE; its use peaked in the early 1900's. Pages 101 and 102 of a reference mentioned by tchrist (American and British English Preferences by Salama and Ghali), shown in part below, list several verbs after which some BE speakers elide to but most AE speakers do not.from pp 101-102 of Salama and Ghali

James Waldby - jwpat7
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    I think one key thing about your observation is the word it. Usage varies with what is being shown. For instance, AE speakers likely say "I need to show you something" as much as "I need to show something to you". – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 17:39
  • A few rough COCA queries elucidate my point: [v*] to [v*] it to you 253 results, [v*] to [v*] you it 58 results, [v*] to [v*] you something 973 results, [v*] to [v*] something to you 48 results – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 17:50
  • There's just something special about it – perhaps due to its "dummy object pronoun" status? – Zairja Oct 17 '12 at 19:23
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    As @Zairja touches upon, just as there are differences in the pragmatic acceptability of e.g. "I gave him a headache" vs "!I gave a headache (to) him", such differences may well extend to pronoun ordering in the case of both objects being pronouns. – Neil Coffey Oct 17 '12 at 20:05
  • While a sentence like "I can't describe the box I got; I need to show you it" is definitely non-standard BrE, it is conceivably something which might be heard. Note the emphasis, though. – Andrew Leach Oct 17 '12 at 21:16
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    Andrew - I'm from the north of England, and in my dialect it would be a completely normal, boring, everyday sentence. – Neil Coffey Oct 18 '12 at 02:45
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It depends on the dialect.

In most dialects, the following is correct:

... show you the important thing.

But dialects differ when we replace the indirect object ("important thing") with "it". Some change the word order:

Show it you.

Others keep the word order the same:

Show you it.

Pitarou
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