I'm sure you suspect the answer: The preferred phrasing is more subservient and less demanding (a role many waiters at fancy restaurants are encouraged to play) even though they mean the same thing.
Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to put out your cigar.
The previous sentence carries a few implications. One might expand it to:
Sir, I would never ask this if it was up to me, but those damn rules they make me follow FORCE ME to ask that you please put out your cigar. I don't blame you, of course.
That is, it's implied that the person asking isn't personally bothered by your cigar; he's just forced to ask you to stop by company policy.
In a less fancy resturant, one might say:
Sorry, but we don't allow smoking in here.
This is the same exact idea. "It's not up to me; it's company policy, sorry!"
It may seem silly (and it is, in some sense), but it probably does help the customer not feel like an idiot!
The answer to the presenting question is:
is ungrammatical because you won't wind up owning the door by virtue of my opening it.
Ordinary bitransitive verbs of transfer (tell, throw, bring, hand, pass, send, etc.), where the direct object (the trajector, semantically) is transferred from the subject (the source) to the indirect object (the goal), normally are subject to the Dative Alternation:
- I'll tell/throw/bring/hand/pass/send the answer to him.
- I'll tell/throw/bring/hand/pass/send him the answer.
Besides these, however, there's also a Benefactive construction, which uses for instead of to, and identifies someone for whose benefit something is done. This can be added to any sentence, 3-place bitransitive, 2-place transitive, or 1-place intransitive. Here we discuss only the transitives:
- I'll open the door for you. (Note -- you don't wind up with the door)
- I'll dig a clam for you. (Note -- you do wind up with the clam)
- I'll fix the car for you. (Note -- you don't wind up with the car)
- I'll fix a meal for you. (Note -- you do wind up with the meal)
In precisely those situations where the Benefactive object of for ends up possessing the direct object, the sentences can undergo Dative; in those cases where they don't, they can't.
- *I'll open you the door.
- I'll dig you a clam.
- *I'll fix you the car.
- I'll fix you a meal.
The last two sentences show that this extension of Dative to Benefactive is not governed by the verb used (fix in both cases), but by the intended meaning of the clause, including idioms, presuppositions, and metaphors.
Best Answer
I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's a contraction of Are you not going to go outside?, which is perfectly acceptable; the addition of the negation changes the expectation conveyed by the sentence to imply that the speaker thought the subject was going to go outside. This is useful, and it's as meaningful to ask about an event not occurring as it is to ask about it occurring.
I suspect that your wife's problem is really with the sound of the word "aren't", especially when pronounced as one syllable. (Ahr-ənt sounds passably okay, arnt sounds hickish and suggestive of the dreaded ain't.)