I’ve seen multiple threads discussing the difference between “want” and “wanted” and it’s just linguist after linguist offering intuition about why this might be and what this might mean and no one saying “huh we could and should actually collect data comparing how both are used” https://twitter.com/Dr_Semantic/status/1316029256867049472

It just feels hugely unsatisfying that the go-to is to treat actual linguistic practices as thought exercises where we confidently say “oh the past tense definitely does this” when this is something that real speakers do and we could actually look at across different settings!

What type of question comes next? Is it a question (“did you agree with...) or a request (“could you...”) or an invitation (“would you like to...”)? Is this happening in an institutional setting where question asking is routine (after class, in an interview, in a courtroom)?

Anyway this thread is making me feel like a positivist and I hate that but empirical investigation of actual talk is a VERY cool thing when it comes to questions of semantics! And these initial thought questions are perfect invitations for that kind of analysis!