this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Is this grammatically correct: "The monkey who I'm wondering if can see my ears." (lemmy.world)
submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Or is it "The monkey for whom I'm wondering if they can see my ears."

or

"The monkey, regarding whom, I'm wondering if they can see my ears."

or

"The monkey who I'm wondering if they can see my ears."

All of them sound stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

“The monkey about whose ability to see my ears I’m wondering”.

Part of the issue is that the thing you’re wondering about needs to be a noun, but the verb “can” doesn’t have an infinitive or gerund form (that is, there’s no purely grammatical way to convert it to a noun, like *“to can” or *“canning”). We generally substitute some form of “to be able to”, but it’s not something our brain does automatically.

Also, there’s an implied pragmatic context that some of the other comments seem to be overlooking:

  • The speaker is apparently replying to a question asking them to indicate one monkey out of several possibilities

  • The other party is already aware of the speaker’s doubts about a particular monkey's ear-seeing ability

  • The reason this doubt is being mentioned now is to identify the monkey, not to declare the doubt.