Using Google to write correct sentences

In the topic "How I'm learning German" (http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2002/122.htm), Tee asked me this question:

<<Could you explain to me how I can use Google to help me build correct sentences? >>


I would like to write an article about using Google for correct writing, but the basic idea is to look up things that you are unsure of.

Let's suppose I'm wondering whether it is correct to write "to have a question for someone" or "to have a question to someone". I can easily answer this question with Google by doing a search on "have a question to" and "have a question for" (note the quotes).

When I search for "have a question to", Google displays sentences taken out of the pages which contained the phrase. In the first few results, I see phrases like "have a question to ask Richard", which is not what I was interested in. So I change the original query to "have a question to you" and find 416 pages. I notice that the first few results are from ESL websites, so they are not reliable.

The search for "have a question for you" returns 28,600 pages.
I conclude that "have a question for someone" is the correct phrase.

Sometimes the results are not so clear, and sometimes I have to conclude that there are two equally good alternatives. For example, "time and again" scores 298,000; "time and time again" scores 263,000.

Google is better than grammar books, because the results show REAL contemporary language, not the opinions of grammarians. I don't like prescriptive grammar (ie. grammarians telling people how they should speak) -- I think what is "correct" is what native speakers find natural.

For example, "different than" is objected to by many prescriptivists. Many usage and style guides consider it "incorrect". Google returns 1,090,000 pages (often from very reputable and educated sources like universities and the press). The result for the "correct" option ("different from") is not much higher: 2,720,000. So, for me, both are correct.

You can verify almost anything (articles, collocations), although you should make sure to look for sufficiently general phrases (so that you get enough results). It's no use looking for "I'm reading "The Design of Everyday Things"". It's much better to look for "I'm reading a book".

Thanks for your article, Tom. It's very useful for me.

However, I think using Google the way you suggest is sometimes unreliable and can be harmful. Suppose I would like to know whether it is correct to write "suggest someone to do something". After I enter the query "suggest you to", Google shows me 28,200 results. This may lead me to wrongly conclude that "suggest someone to do something" is the correct usage :-(

What if I would like to find example sentences on the internet (other than from dictionaries)? Do you know any kind of search engines which will show me only correct sentences?

I think "suggest sb to do sth" is acceptable. I searched for "suggested me to" and found 3,000 instances in sentences that were written in perfectly good English. "Suggested that I" turned up 10 times more pages.

What do you mean by "correct", Tee? Can you say that 3,000 native speakers used an incorrect phrase? I'm very interested in your understanding of correctness. If the Web -- a collection of documents written by native speakers -- is a flawed source of knowledge about English, then what sort of source is acceptable?

My conclusion from the 3,000 hits is that "suggest sb to do sth" is natural enough to be used by native speakers from time to time. I think there is no reason to correct a learner who uses this phrase.

About your question -- you can try the tool on COBUILD's website. The problem is that it has much less sentences than Google and that it doesn't always show full sentences.

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What do you mean by "correct", Tee?
>>>

What I think is "correct" is exactly the same as what you think - what native speakers find natural.

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Can you say that 3,000 native speakers used an incorrect phrase?
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How do you know that those webpages are written by native speakers? I can find that most of the webpages which contain "suggested me to" are written by non-native speakers.

>>>
I searched for "suggested me to" and found 3,000 instances in sentences that were written in perfectly good English.
<<<

Perhaps those sentences are written by non-native speakers who are fairly good at English but who still make some mistakes.

I also try using "Corpus Concordance Sampler" (on COBUILD's website) to search for "suggest+you+to" and no results are shown. But when I search for "suggest+you+VERB", there are a lot of instances found. So I still think it is "incorrect" to use "suggest sb to do sth".

I think a lot of webpages on the internet are written in nonstandard English(note what I mean by "nonstandard" is what native speakers do not use.)

Can you find some sentences which are truly written by native speakers and which contain the verb pattern "suggest sb to do sth"? (In fact, I don't know much about its usage. That is, I don't know whether native speakers find it natural or not. My comment is based on my knowledge of grammar, on the information in dictionaries, and on what I have read.)

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you can try the tool on COBUILD's website. The problem is that it has much less sentences than Google and that it doesn't always show full sentences.
<<<

I agree with you. The tool is quite good as the instances shown are taken from reliable sources. But it is not appropriate for searching for example sentences.

I took a closer look at the results returned by Google for a number of variations of "suggest sb to do sth", and I must admit you're right. The majority of the pages seem to have been written by non-natives. So, the phrase probably IS incorrect.

I guess this shows that using the Web to verify hypotheses about the English language is quite tricky. Thank you for investigating this. I will have to be more careful in the future!

It's verry nice/////////

thanks for your help.