preposition - zero variation

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 16, 2009, at 12:18 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> arnold, how about:
>
> NP1 VP1 _for_ NP2 to VP2
>
> as in sentences like:
>
> "I would like _for_ you to comment on this insertion of? / failure to
> delete? _for_."
>
> as opposed to:
>
> "I' would like _0_  you to comment on this ..."

Jespersen's treatment of cases like "like for" (MEG, vol. 5) is that
the verb has an infinitive clause as its object and that clause is
introduced by "for".  there's  a later tradition for labeling "for" in
such cases as a complementizer; it's certainly not a garden-variety
preposition, so this construction doesn't fall into the same type as
the simple cases of P~zero i looked at in my blog posting.

Jespersen listed a number of verbs that occur in this construction,
but gave only one example of "like for" (from a George Eliot novel,
where it was probably intended to represent Warwickshire dialect).

MWDEU has an entry on "like for" that suggests it is (or at least was)
primarily a Southern and Midland expression, and primarily a feature
of the spoken language.  objections to it -- MWDEU lists seven -- seem
to favor the Northern, zero, variant. the "for" variant, MWDEU says,
"is hard to find in edited prose and seemingly always has been, even
though Bryant traces it back to 1474.

DARE identifies it as chiefly Southern and South Midlands and has
cites from the 1880s on.

New Fowler's (Burchfield 1998) says it hasn't spread outside America
and occurs mostly in Southern states but is "not so regionally
restricted now".

"like for" is an obvious candidate for criticism on the basis of Omit
Needless Words, but i haven't found anyone who says this straight out.

> That is, is this only a BE and other non-standard usage

well, regional; i suspect that "non-standard" is too strong a judgment.

> or has its use
> among the general population merely escaped my notice?

probably this.  i *think* i use it myself sometimes, in writing as
well as speech.

arnold

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