final prepositions (was: various)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jan 10, 2007, at 9:57 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:

> Jim Landau  (I think) wrote:
>
>>  The reason for the prescriptivist notion not "to end a sentence
>> with a preposition" is not that prepositions are insignificant
>> (they are not) but 1) Latin never ended sentences with prepositions
>> (being case-inflected, it didn't use much in the way of
>> prepositions---the "law" against split infinitives probably comes
>> from the fact that in Latin it is physically impossible to split an
>> infinitive so why should English be different?) and 2) (much more
>> reasonable-sounding) it splits up the two parts of a phrasal verb,
>> *allegedly* making the sentence harder to understand because the
>> listener has to reassemble the verb phrase. (A terminal prepsition
>> in an English sentence, as far as I can tell, is always part of a
>> phrasal verb, never part of a prepositional phrase)  However,
>> avoiding a terminal preposition can lead to such clumsy
>> constructions that the listener would find it easier to understand
>> the sentence with the terminal preposition.
>
>
>  "Who did you donate the car to?"
>  "What did you put the cat up in the tree for?"
>
> Are you claiming that "donate to" and "put up in the tree for" are
> phrasal
> verbs?

i was going to reply on just this point, with similar examples.  the
Cambridge Grammar of English, section 7.4.1, has a nice discussion of
preposition stranding and fronting, including cases where *fronting*
is "inadmissible or disfavoured".

but there's a terminological issue to be cleared up here.  mark and i
were assuming that "phrasal verb" refers to verb + particle
combinations, like "run up" in "run up a bill".  particle + object
can't be fronted, because it's not a constituent:
   *Up what kind of a bill did he run?
the object by itself can of course be fronted, leaving the particle
back in sentence-final position:
   What kind of a bill did he run up?

that's (V + Prt) + Obj.  but there are huge numbers of cases of V +
(Prep + Obj) where the V and Prep together make some kind of lexical
(but not syntactic) unit: "rely on" in "rely on their friends" etc.
these are not normally referred to as "phrasal verbs".  for the most
part, they allow both stranding and fronting:
   Which friends do they rely on?
   On which friends do they rely?

fronting is much less good when V + Prep is decidedly informal
(there's a clash with the formality associated with fronting) and/or
idiomatic (fronting breaks up the parts of the V + P idiom), as with
"take after" 'resemble' in "take after her mother":
   Which parent do girls usually take after?
   *After which parent do girls usually take?

even more entertaining are cases of (V + Prt) + (Prep + Obj), where
(V + Prt) + Prep is an idiom, as in "get off on" 'appreciate' in "get
off on rock music":
   What kind of music do you get off on?
   *On what kind of music do you get off?

i know, some of you are asking why "after" in "take after" and "on"
in "get off on" are categorized as P rather than Prt.  several
reasons.  for one thing, wh questions in which the object of a P is
questioned can be answered with just the object, *or* with (Prep+ Obj):
   Who do you rely on?  My friends.  OR  On my friends.
   Which parent does she take after?  Her mother.  OR  After her mother.
   What kind of music do you get off on?  Rock music.  OR  On rock
music.
while, of course, Prt + Obj cannot be an answer, since it's not a
constituent:
   What kind of bill did he run up?  A huge one.  BUT  *Up a huge one.

in addition, for (Prep + Obj), the constituent can be modified be
"even" or "only" (and some other modifiers, but these modifiers are
less good on the object of the Prep:
   He gets off even on rock music.
   ??He gets off on even rock music.

while Prt + Obj works in the opposite way:
   *Did he run even up a small bill?
   Did he run up even a small bill?

arnold

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