This question was spurred by some comments that sprung underneath an ELL question of mine. The comments have since been deleted.
User 1: There's nothing wrong with "Yes, I will be". (I agree that "*I'll be" is incorrect though.)
User 2: Are you sure? I don't think, "Yes, I will be" is correct. I Ngrammed "yes i will be" and got a result of zero. Also Ngrammed "yes, i will be" and "yes" got positive results, but "i will be" got zero results, too.
User 1: @_______: Yes, I'm sure. Your ngram is wrong - remember the word "I" is always capitalised; if you fix that you do get results. (Most of them are "Yes, I will be xxx", rather than just "Yes, I will be.", but if you keep searching you will find odd examples of the latter.)
User 2: Cont'd from previous comment. I checked the Ngram results for "Yes I will be" and could not find any examples. Ngram results for "Yes, I will be." and "Yes I will be." were also zero.
User 2: @______ And I realize that "I" is always capitalized. But I hadn't turned on case sensitivity, so now I'm confused why "Yes i will be" and "Yes I will be" returns different results.
In light of the various Ngram and Google Books results reported by User 1, it appears that he may be right. Is he?
Why am I asking?
In every grammar and English course book I have ever used with learners or for myself, I have never ever read the short answer: Yes, I will be. These books simply don't "teach" this type of response, the classic short answers to questions beginning with the auxiliary, will, are always given as either Yes, I will or No, I won't. The two questions which I posted were the following:
- Will you be coming to the staff party on Thursday?
- Will you be having cake?
In the second question, I offered the following list of short answers:
- Yes, thank you.
- Yes, I will.
- Yes, I will be
- Yes, I will do.
- Why is answer no.3 grammatical?
- What evidence is there to support it?
- Is answer number 4 (above) ungrammatical?
An American user suggested that "Yes, I will do" was wrong. (Please refer to the linked question below, for further details)
Thank you
The ELL related questions which sparked the above discussion
No comments:
Post a Comment