Grammar question -- "from throughout the year"?

[Randy Alexander]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would expect "throughout the year" to be adverbial or adjectival. Here
> it's a noun, and looks wrong. Given the availability of alternatives
> ("newspapers published throughout the year", "from the entire year"), I
> would rewrite it.


Sorry for coming to this so late.

I agree with the idea of re-writing it, but it is perfectly grammatical.
"Throughout the year" is not a noun, but a preposition phrase, and many
prepositions can take preposition phrases as complement.  "From" does this
often enough, as in "He came from around the corner".

Randy

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > A friend has questioned the following sentence I have crafted, as
> > being if not ungrammatical at least awkward:
> >
> > "It is clear from the above that he read issues of these newspapers
> > from throughout the year; these articles [that he has discussed] come
> > from every month."
> >
> > What say the prescriptivists on this list?  And as well, the
> free-thinkers?
> >
> > Joel
>

--
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, China
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