Asking somebody to select between two or more options
Assume we want to ask somebody to choose between two options. Each option is a phrase like "stay home" or "come with me". What is the correct form of asking such questions?
- Do you want to stay home or come with me?
- Do you want to stay home or do you want to come with me?
- Do you want to stay home or you want to come with me?
Any better form? What if there are more than two options?
1 or 2 is fine (but use at home or even home rather than in home); 3 is not. (However, in informal speech, the instances of do are often dropped from 1 or 2.)
For more than two options, the same applies:
- Do you want to stay home, come with me, or go to town?
- Do you want to stay home, do you want to come with me, or do you want to go to town?
Of course, with more options, 2 is very wordy, so 1 will be more common.
You can choose between:
Do you want to stay at home, or come with me?
Do you want to stay at home, or do you want to come with me?
This is an interesting question, because the answer seems to be more pragmatic than grammatical.
As others have said, you can coordinate the object of the verb "want":
Do you want [[to stay at home] or [to come with me]]?
or you can coordinate the whole VP (verb phrase):
[[Do you want to stay at home] or [do you want to come with me]]?
But there are two other levels at which you might try to coordinate:
Do you [[want to stay at home] or [want to come with me]]?
Do [[you want to stay at home] or [you want to come with me]]?
and these are not acceptable (at least, the last isn't: the previous one might just be).
But this is not a grammatical restriction: if you make the alternatives more different, they are fine in my estimation:
Do you [[want to stay at home] or [prefer to come with me]]?
Do [[you want to stay at home] or [both of you want to come with me]]?