Monday, June 10, 2019

grammaticality - "Yes, I will be"

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:






  1. Yes, thank you.

  2. Yes, I will.

  3. Yes, I will be

  4. 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




  1. Why is “I'll be”, wrong as a short answer?

  2. Will you be having cake?

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