I lately lost a preposition

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Feb 18, 2008, at 8:18 AM, i wrote:

> On Feb 15, 2008, at 4:51 PM, Alison Murie wrote:
>
>> Another prepositional oddity....or so it seems to me.  I realize
>> this usage
>> has been around for a long time, but somehow I just *heard* it.
>> "Listeners
>> of" such & such a radio station.  It probably arises from the need
>> for
>> "public" radio to solicit funds from their listeners to stay afloat,
>> who
>> then become "members"  of the station.
>
> "listener to" is what you'd predict from the the argument structure of
> "listen" ("listen to").  "listener of" has "of", the default
> preposition for complements of nouns.  so both should be possible.
>
> in fact, i think they are both possible, and have somewhat different
> usage...

something else favoring "of" with "listener": the video counterpart to
"listener" is "viewer", derived from the verb "view".  "view" is an
ordinary transitive verb, which means that the verb doesn't "come
with" a preposition for marking its complement, but instead takes a
direct object.  but a derived -er noun requires a preposition to mark
*its* complement.  normally, the noun "inherits" its preposition from
the base verb; if that verb doesn't come with one, the default
preposition "of" is used.  hence: "viewers of KQED".  "listeners of
KQED" is then parallel to this.

an interesting wrinkle: the complement of the base verb can be
expressed in one of three ways with the derived -er noun: in a PP
following the noun; or as an -s possessive (a determiner preceding the
noun) -- "KQED's viewers", "KQED's listeners"; or as the first element
of a noun-noun compound -- "KQED viewers", "KQED listeners".  the last
two constructions allow you to avoid the question of which P to use,
but they're not always available ("a listener to KQED" has no -s
possessive counterpart, and "listeners to this radio station" has no
compound-noun counterpart), and in any case they  can produce ugly
left-heavy NPs (like "San Francisco National Public Radio station('s)
listeners").

arnold

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