"due to"

Wed Aug 30 16:12:43 UTC 2006

On Aug 30, 2006, at 7:06 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> Wilson, are you sure they admonished you against constructions like,
>
>   1. "due to they are nasty" ?
>
>   The only "due to" prescription I ever heard of opposed things like,
>
>   2. "Game cancelled due to rain."
>
>   There's a difference in function here.  I don't recall ever
> seeing the "new" "due to" addressed.  For me, 2 is normal (as is
> the prescriptive "The cancellation is due to rain"), but 1 is
> nearly unimaginable.
>
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: "due to" and "general"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Prescriptivists - this is not a reference to anyone here, of course -
> have been fighting this battle since at least the '40's, when I was in
> elementary school. The phrase, "due to (the fact)" = "for the
> following reason," is practically a shibboleth of BE, due to the fact
> that *everybody* uses it. Wouldn't nobody not use it...

there are two prescriptions: one against "due to the fact that" + S
(as an alternative to "because" + S), the other is against certain
uses of "due to" + NP (as an alternation to "because of" + NP or
"owing to" + NP).  MWDEU discusses both.

but jon's original example is of the form "due to " + ("that") S,
that is, apparently involving a clause as the object of a preposition
("to").  this is so nonstandard that the handbooks seem not to warn
about it.  but it does occur; googling on <"due to I have"> pulls up
a bunch of web examples like these (i've selected ones that seem to
be from native speakers of english):

1. About one month into this (something that could have taken no more
than 10 days) I was told that they could not help me due to I have
not lived in my home ...
www.complaints.com/directory/2004/december/2/12.htm

2. I'm missing home and hope that it goes away because I’m not going
home this summer due to I have a job. But that's one of the
sacrifices that you make when ...
www.southern.edu/?page=diaries/index.php

3. Also cat scratch fever has not been ruled out, due to I have had
contact with a young cat (that wasn't taken care of), ...
www.medhelp.org/forums/FamilyPractice/messages/288.html

"owing to" probably can work like "due to", but most of the examples
i google up quickly are clearly from non-native speakers (mostly
chinese).

clauses sometimes appear as objects of other prepositions as well.
here's an example i caught recently:

4. International opinion is shifted over the last week I think pretty
clearly in the direction of that there needs to be some sort of cease-
fire.
   (Juan Williams, interviewed about the news of the week, NPR's
Morning Edition Saturday, 7/29/06)

"because of" + ("that") S (instead of plain "because") is also
moderately common, as in:

5. I had, recently, a tense moment with a loved one and perhaps this
person's behaviors irritated me so because of I saw this behavior in
myself. ...
beckyandsteve.blogspot.com/2006/ 07/im-angry-at-you-because-of-part-
of-me.html

back in 2004, mark liberman noted on Language Log --

   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001735.html

that although he rejected "because of" + S, he himself used "'cause
of" +S, and he googled up a bunch of examples like

6. Now I am sad, cause of I can't help fight child molestors anymore.

(he also googled up a pile of "because of" + S examples, of course.
and noted that they weren't in the OED.)

at least one of these P + S types has caught the attention of the
usagists: "on account of", as in:

7. I went to bed, on account of I hate late-night television. ...
www.bartleby.com/68/69/4269.html

8. You know it's not often we get to hold these big shindigs for
foreign leaders – mainly on account of I've done such a shockin'
awesome job getting the rest ...
www.whitehouse.org/news/2006/042006.asp

9. At least the photographer didn't offer to take my picture, which
is good on account of I still have that bad tooth and I look like
crap when I smile. ...
www.wetmachine.com/archive/1/2005-11

this one is very common, but as MWDEU observes in its "on account of"
entry, decidedly nonstandard.

i used to have a collection of P + S examples, a file folder with
little slips of paper in it (also a collection of subordinating
conjunctions with "that"-complements, like "because that" + S and
"although that" + S).  i probably still do, but in the Great Removal
from ohio to california in 1998, it disappeared into the mountain of
file folders and has not been seen since.  so i've recently started
new collections on my computer.

by the way, i have no reason to think that P + S is particularly new,
as jon suggests.  new to him, and to many of us here, but probably
around in the language for quite some time.  but in nonstandard
speech and writing, which has been very imperfectly sampled until
recently.  now we can google up the usage of hoi polloi, and there
are lots of surprises there.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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