major_kerina (
major_kerina) wrote2009-02-05 11:01 pm
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The "Rules" Of Prepositions
Prepositions
Prepositions are words that form phrases with a following noun phrase.
Together they form a prepositional phrase:
to my friend
in the park
behind your back
through the window
on the job market (the job market is the noun phrase)
The first word in a prepositional phrase is usually the preposition.
The following noun phrase is the object of the preposition.
If the object of the preposition is a pronoun, it always occurs in object form.
from Mary = from her
to my friends = to them
Phrasal Prepositions
Some groups of words actually comprise a single preposition because they have the same function and distribution as one word prepositions. Below are a few examples:
instead of
because of
on account of
in addition to
Identify the prepositional phrases in the sentences below:
War and Peace is about most marriages.
“Rocky XXXVI” has great scenes of gnashing gums.
The store on the corner sells shrunken heads from the Amazon.
People hate to be put on hold.
Stranding Prepositions
At some point in their educational career, most students have received a comment such as “don’t strand prepositions” or “don’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
Such statements are examples of prescriptive rules, rules of speaking and writing correctly under the assumption of an absolute standard of correctness.
This ‘rule’ of not stranding a preposition was artificially incorporated into the grammar of English by English grammarians in the 18th century.
They took the rule from Latin. In Latin the stranding of a preposition does violate the grammar of the language and is thus ungrammatical.
Is the stranding of prepositions grammatical in English?
The answer is definitely yes.
It is the necessary result of certain movement rules of English.
WARNING: What follows is technical, and not for the grammatically infirm.
What are you talking about?
The question above has a stranded preposition--about.
About is stranded because English has a movement rule called Wh-movement which takes Wh words and moves them to the beginning of a clause.
The question actually started out as “You are talking about what?”
If the Wh word is the object of a preposition, the preposition will be stranded.
Notice that no other acceptable way really exists to utter or write the question.
You might be tempted to say : “About what are you talking?”
Though such remedies might work at times, they usually sound unnatural and affected.
So if an instructor says “don’t strand prepositions,” say “you don’t know what you are talking about.”
The previous statement is of course frivolous.
The non-stranding of prepositions has become the standard in Edited American English, and some English teachers and editors will mark sentences containing stranded prepositions as wrong.
Finally then, the stranding of prepositions is not ungrammatical, and speakers of English strand them every day.
However, in formal writing the stranding of prepositions is not the preferred choice stylistically even if it is grammatical.
Prepositions are words that form phrases with a following noun phrase.
Together they form a prepositional phrase:
to my friend
in the park
behind your back
through the window
on the job market (the job market is the noun phrase)
The first word in a prepositional phrase is usually the preposition.
The following noun phrase is the object of the preposition.
If the object of the preposition is a pronoun, it always occurs in object form.
from Mary = from her
to my friends = to them
Phrasal Prepositions
Some groups of words actually comprise a single preposition because they have the same function and distribution as one word prepositions. Below are a few examples:
instead of
because of
on account of
in addition to
Identify the prepositional phrases in the sentences below:
War and Peace is about most marriages.
“Rocky XXXVI” has great scenes of gnashing gums.
The store on the corner sells shrunken heads from the Amazon.
People hate to be put on hold.
Stranding Prepositions
At some point in their educational career, most students have received a comment such as “don’t strand prepositions” or “don’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
Such statements are examples of prescriptive rules, rules of speaking and writing correctly under the assumption of an absolute standard of correctness.
This ‘rule’ of not stranding a preposition was artificially incorporated into the grammar of English by English grammarians in the 18th century.
They took the rule from Latin. In Latin the stranding of a preposition does violate the grammar of the language and is thus ungrammatical.
Is the stranding of prepositions grammatical in English?
The answer is definitely yes.
It is the necessary result of certain movement rules of English.
WARNING: What follows is technical, and not for the grammatically infirm.
What are you talking about?
The question above has a stranded preposition--about.
About is stranded because English has a movement rule called Wh-movement which takes Wh words and moves them to the beginning of a clause.
The question actually started out as “You are talking about what?”
If the Wh word is the object of a preposition, the preposition will be stranded.
Notice that no other acceptable way really exists to utter or write the question.
You might be tempted to say : “About what are you talking?”
Though such remedies might work at times, they usually sound unnatural and affected.
So if an instructor says “don’t strand prepositions,” say “you don’t know what you are talking about.”
The previous statement is of course frivolous.
The non-stranding of prepositions has become the standard in Edited American English, and some English teachers and editors will mark sentences containing stranded prepositions as wrong.
Finally then, the stranding of prepositions is not ungrammatical, and speakers of English strand them every day.
However, in formal writing the stranding of prepositions is not the preferred choice stylistically even if it is grammatical.