Jan Freeman on preposition dropping

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Nice column today by Jan Freeman in The Globe about how Brits blame
preposition dropping ("appeal/battle/protest against" -> trans.
"appeal/battle/protest") on the Yanks:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/09/yankees_win/

It's a nice example of what Lynne Murphy recently dubbed British
Verbal Superiority Complex (mirroring American Verbal Inferiority
Complex):

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/09/diapers-nappies-and-verbal-inferiority.html

On a side note, Jan's column refers to Arnold Zwicky's ADS-L
discussion of "abscond (with)" last month. That's when the list was
suffering from some weird posting behavior -- Arnold's post never
showed up in the archive, even though it showed up in (some?)
subscribers' mailboxes. My reply to Arnold's post did show up in the
archive:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0708B&L=ADS-L&P=27049


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org