Tuesday, November 29, 2011

grammaticality - "A wants B to guess that..." or just "A wants B to guess who/what/where/how..."?

I am testing whether "A wants B to guess..." can be followed by both declarative and interrogative clauses. I am not a native speaker but "A wants B to guess that.." does not sound acceptable to me.




Do you think they are natural sentences in English?




[1a] Mary wants Sue to guess who John talked to.




(This should be perfectly natural, right?)





[1b] Mary wants Sue to guess that John talked to Prof. Smith.




(If this sounds natural, how do you interpret this sentence?)



As a contrast, compared with 1b, what do you think about




[1c] Mary wants to guess that John talked to Prof. Smith.





(Is 1b better than 1c?)



Thank you!

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