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Is this sentence grammatically correct?

"Anne, do you ever like play-fighting?"

or

"Anne, do you ever like to play-fight?"

Unless you're talking about play-fighting against Anne, then you'd be good I think.

BTW, I'm just best guessing this shit, don't judge.
 
I think it's correct (if murky) if the meaning is "play-fighting as Anne?" or "play-fighting against Anne?". If Anne is the person you're addressing then you at least need a comma I think.
 
'play-fighting Anne' could also be a toy, like 'rock'em sock'em robot' or 'computer-tech Barbie'
 
It's a bit awkward because you're temporally compressing "like" while expanding "play-fight" to cover every instance of such.

"Do you ever like to play-fight with Anne," would be better.
"Do you ever like to play-fight, Anne?" For asking Anne.

^^ so the second
 
The implication seems to be that you are asking another person if that person enjoys play-fighting with/against Anne.

If that is not your desired effect, either put Anne at the beginning of the sentence with a comma, or simply add a comma before Anne as currently arranged.
 
DominionSeraph said:
"Do you ever like to play-fight, Anne?" For asking Anne.
Click to expand...

If I understand what you're trying to convey, then it should have a comma as illustrated by the quote; however, I'm not sure if removing the gerund is necessary. It does sound a bit cleaner.

EDIT:

videogames101 said:
Its grammar is fine; its meaning however is ambiguous without context.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's correct. I'm pretty certain that it's not grammatically sound, because I cannot give "Anne" a grammatical role in the current sentence, which is the ambiguity that you describe. For example, if you put "with Anne", then she would become the indirect object. As she is right now, I don't even know what part of a sentence that noun is. 😛
 
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Aikouka said:
If I understand what you're trying to convey, then it should have a comma as illustrated by the quote; however, I'm not sure if removing the gerund is necessary. It does sound a bit cleaner.

EDIT:



I don't think that's correct. I'm pretty certain that it's not grammatically sound, because I cannot give "Anne" a grammatical role in the current sentence, which is the ambiguity that you describe. For example, if you put "with Anne", then she would become the indirect object. As she is right now, I don't even know what part of a sentence that noun is. 😛
Click to expand...

My point was it could have multiple roles, more than one of which make a perfectly sound sentence. Either you're speaking with Anne about play-fighting, or to someone else about play-fighting with her, and either way it makes sense.

EDIT: Although it may simply be we define a "sound" sentence slightly differently.
 
videogames101 said:
My point was it could have multiple roles, more than one of which make a perfectly sound sentence. Either you're speaking with Anne about play-fighting, or to someone else about play-fighting with her, and either way it makes sense.

EDIT: Although it may simply be we define a "sound" sentence slightly differently.
Click to expand...

I'm really just nitpicking over saying that the grammar is fine. It's essentially lacking some grammatical structure (punctuation, phrasing, etc) to make the sentence correct.

I do agree that in its current form, the wording leads to multiple meanings, which are defined by whatever grammatical change you make to the sentence.

No biggie... just being anal retentive. 😛
 
Aikouka said:
however, I'm not sure if removing the gerund is necessary. It does sound a bit cleaner.
Click to expand...

It wasn't necessary. I just like slotting things together nicely.
"Ever like" chops things up into individual segments that hold the question of, "Do I like the thing in question here - yes/no", so it helps to have your object be something that fits nicely within a segment. "Play-fighting" isn't used often enough for you to have "occurrence of play-fighting" on immediate recall for you to slot it into the segments to check for the answer. So it takes a little extra time to crunch "play-fighting" down.
If there's an immediate emotional reaction to "play-fighting" the answer may be right there with no thinking required, but to actually work the concepts of, "Ever like playfighting" does take some crunching.
 
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