"The food what we ate for dinner" might not be standard English, but it 
certainly is common in lots of English dialects.

At the risk of injecting more theory into this, what about the term 
"indirect question"? That's how I understand these examples:

When will the notice arrive?
I wonder when the notice will arrive.
Ask him when the notice will arrive.
I told him when the notice will arrive.

And, of course, this brings in the previous discussion about not 
changing the word order of an embedded question:

I wonder will the notice arrive?

This is a structure a lot of people consider wrong, but it is only a 
step away from its correspondent with a pause:

I wonder ... will the notice arrive?

I think a lot of confusion here is due to terminology: NP vs. nominal, 
for example. To me, NP's have to have a head noun. Nominals are other 
grammatical constructions that can function the way NP's do. Keeping the 
terms apart helps distinguish structure from function.

Why do we have to say the clause is a direct object? Why can't we just 
say that "wonder" takes clausal complements? The pronoun versions are 
interesting. In fact, I feel (pardon the armchair linguistics) a 
difference between "I was wondering about something" and "I was 
wondering something". The latter seems to me to apply only in cases of 
"if/whether" situations, where the truth of a proposition is at stake, 
while the former could be about anything, such as "I was wondering how 
it is that we never see the dark side of the moon". The following 
exchange seems pragmatically odd to me:

A: I was wondering something.
B: What?
A: When the notice will arrive.

vs. this, which sounds better:

A: I was wondering something.
B: What?
A: Will the notice arrive?

And just to make things more interesting, what is the discourse function 
that underlies the notion "nominal"? What motivation do we have for 
making a clause into something that can fill an NP slot? For people who 
believe that grammar emerges from discourse needs, this is an important 
question.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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