Is "To Be" Omitted?

Question

I want you sitting there.I don't want him coming to my house so often.I don't want people playing the piano at all times of the day and night.Could I say that those sentences originally is:I want you to be sitting there.I don't want him to be coming to my house so often.I don't want people to be playing the piano at all times of the day and night.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

anonymousCould I say that those sentences originally is:I want you to be sitting there.I don't want him to be coming to my house so often.I don't want people to be playing the piano at all times of the day and night.

No, but that is what they mean. The participle has that much power alone.

By the way, the third one is more natural as "I don't want people playing the piano at all hours." or "I don't want people playing the piano day and night."

CalifJim · Answer

anonymous
I want you sitting there.
I don't want him coming to my house so often.
I don't want people playing the piano at all times of the day and night.
Could I say that those sentences originally is:
I want you to be sitting there.
I don't want him to be coming to my house so often.
I don't want people to be playing the piano at all times of the day and night.

Yes, but you could just as easily say that

I want you to be sitting there.

comes from the original sentence

I want you sitting there.

by adding 'to be'.

Each sentence is a variant of the other. It's hard to say which one has the better claim of being "the original sentence".

You can even throw

I want you to sit there.

into the mix and make the question even more complicated. Maybe this last sentence is the original one from which the other two are derived.

It might be better to say that they are different ways of saying the same thing.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

anonymous
Your questions have been already correctly answered by CJ. I just want to add a few comments.
You seemed to be quite persistent with your own idea but friend, you are wrong.
I want you sitting there. No, this is bad grammar. Want / need/ would like- is alway followed by infinitve. The correct form of your sentence should be " I want you to sit over there".
I don't want him ~~coming~~ to come to my house so often. You need infinitive here also. However, you can use keep the present participle (coming) if you revise it to: I don't want [to see him] coming to my house....
I don't want [to hear] people playing the piano at all times of the day and night. Correct as edited
Could I say that those sentences originally is:
I want you to be sitting there. I agree this is a variance of "I want you to sit over there", however, the variance must work with the semantic context. There is alwasys alternative way to express the same idea, but the writer must consider if it is semantically suitable to the context.
I don't want him to be coming to my house anymore ~~so often~~. This is fine because the context "to be coming" can be interpretated as "in the future", so it would be more senamtically correct to use "anymore"

Is "To Be" Omitted?

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