Re: difference, if any, between "suggest that we do ..." and "suggest doing ..."
I suggest turning myself in. (I'm making a suggestion to myself.)
There's nothing ungrammatical about this. It just makes little/no sense because why would one make a suggestion to oneself?
I'm not sure one can be said meaningfully to make a suggestion to oneself, but one can certainly give oneself direct and indirect orders. I would venture to say that we all have experience of doing that in our mental life, and that, for all of us, in that case, "I" becomes "you." I can say to myself, "Get up.
You're going to be late if
you stay in bed much longer." Or I might say: "
You need to get up now." Or I can use "I": "
I need to get up." But if I use an imperative, I
have to use the second person. Surely even Piscean would find the following orders ungrammatical:
(i)
*[strike]Speak for myself.[/strike]
(ii)
*[strike]Get myself dressed.[/strike]
(iii)
*[strike]Sit myself down.[/strike]
(iv)
*[strike]
Buy myself some more time.[/strike]
In all of those cases, "myself" has to be changed to "yourself" in order for the sentence to work. Throughout the history of English grammar, all grammarians have agreed that the implied subject of imperatives is "you," which of course is sometimes explicit in the imperative, as it is in "You be quiet!" Piscean, I believe, has more grammars in his library than I do. I believe that he would find this point in all of them.
The case of "suggest V-ing" is probably not nearly as commonly dealt with. I haven't even bothered looking in Quirk or in Huddleston and Pullum for it, though I might. I suppose it is possible that they touch on this issue, which is specific to the present-simple tense usage of "suggest V-ing", a structure particular to the
speech act of making a suggestion.
Fujibei's original question, which this forum has not seen, used the past tense: "I suggested eating out tonight." There are no problems with supposing that both Fujibei and his wife were included in the suggestion referred to in that past-tense sentence: "Was it you who suggested eating out tonight? I'm so glad we did."
Going back to the present simple, I didn't think that native speakers' intuitions on this point could diverge so widely. I feel as though Piscean is going into contortions to force something unnatural with
*[strike]
I suggest turning myself in[/strike], which I continue to find totally ungrammatical. I am on the fence about "I suggest turning ourselves in." Part of me finds it ungrammatical, and another part thinks judging it so might be going too far. What I am certain about is that I find it far better with an overt first-person plural possessive subject:
I suggest our turning ourselves in.
Surely we can all agree that the following are ungrammatical. If we can't, I won't be sure that we speak the same language.
(v) *[strike]
I suggest turning himself in.[/strike]
(vi) *[strike]
I suggest turning herself in.[/strike]
(vii) *[strike]
I suggest turning themselves in.[/strike]
And surely we can agree that the following are grammatical, these being fixed by virtue of the overt possessive subject of the gerund clause.
(viii) I suggest his turning himself in.
(ix) I suggest her turning herself in.
(x) I suggest their turning themselves in.