Right, but in all the "Sam enjoys the paper?" uses, you'd normally only do that if you were repeating something already said, and questioning a specific part of it. Like your friend said, "Sam enjoys the paper" and you're asking for a clarification by repeating and emphasizing a part of the statement.
Otherwise, it's just easier/clearer to phrase it like "Who was enjoying the paper?" or "How does Sam feel about the paper?" or "What does Sam like to read?"
But those constructions don't necessarily apply to other regional variants of English (especially if English is a second language for them). In that case they may be adapting their English grammar to be closer to the syntax of another language they speak.
Several of us here, including myself, are guessing that the blog author may be Indian (I'm not sure, it's just a guess). If so, there are papers studying this phenomenon or something close to it (I'm not really sure... I'm interested in languages, but I'm not at all a linguist and this is way over my head...). I'll quote (emphasis added) one paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265785678_Embedded_...
> The corpus study reported here challenges a conventional assumption in the World Englishes literature concerning the grammar of L2 English in India: that auxiliary inversion with wh -movement (henceforth wh -inversion) is exactly the opposite of standard U.S. and U.K. English, being impossible in main clauses yet obligatory in embedded clauses (Bhatt, 2000 ; Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008 ; Trudgill & Hannah, 2008 ). 2 If the prevailing account were valid, this language variety would constitute a rogue grammar in the sense of Thomas ( 1991 ). However, the results suggest that, in this respect, the grammars of L2 users of English in mul-tilingual societies, just like those of monolingual speakers of standard varieties, fall within the compass of Universal Grammar (UG).
In other words... what you're saying makes perfect sense to me and presumably other speakers of some broad "American English" because we're used to those formulations. English elsewhere in the world, possibly including wherever the blog author came from, does not necessarily follow the same rules all the time, especially if English is just one of a matrix of languages they use throughout a week, mixing and matching languages and grammars according to who and what they need to communicate.
As an aside... if stuff like this interests you, the movie Arrival might be interesting? It's that rare pop-sci movie that tries to actually deal with alien linguistics instead of hand-waving it away with a universal translator/babelfish.
Otherwise, it's just easier/clearer to phrase it like "Who was enjoying the paper?" or "How does Sam feel about the paper?" or "What does Sam like to read?"
But those constructions don't necessarily apply to other regional variants of English (especially if English is a second language for them). In that case they may be adapting their English grammar to be closer to the syntax of another language they speak.
Several of us here, including myself, are guessing that the blog author may be Indian (I'm not sure, it's just a guess). If so, there are papers studying this phenomenon or something close to it (I'm not really sure... I'm interested in languages, but I'm not at all a linguist and this is way over my head...). I'll quote (emphasis added) one paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265785678_Embedded_...
> The corpus study reported here challenges a conventional assumption in the World Englishes literature concerning the grammar of L2 English in India: that auxiliary inversion with wh -movement (henceforth wh -inversion) is exactly the opposite of standard U.S. and U.K. English, being impossible in main clauses yet obligatory in embedded clauses (Bhatt, 2000 ; Mesthrie & Bhatt, 2008 ; Trudgill & Hannah, 2008 ). 2 If the prevailing account were valid, this language variety would constitute a rogue grammar in the sense of Thomas ( 1991 ). However, the results suggest that, in this respect, the grammars of L2 users of English in mul-tilingual societies, just like those of monolingual speakers of standard varieties, fall within the compass of Universal Grammar (UG).
In other words... what you're saying makes perfect sense to me and presumably other speakers of some broad "American English" because we're used to those formulations. English elsewhere in the world, possibly including wherever the blog author came from, does not necessarily follow the same rules all the time, especially if English is just one of a matrix of languages they use throughout a week, mixing and matching languages and grammars according to who and what they need to communicate.
As an aside... if stuff like this interests you, the movie Arrival might be interesting? It's that rare pop-sci movie that tries to actually deal with alien linguistics instead of hand-waving it away with a universal translator/babelfish.