Fucking shut the fuck up

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:20:25 Zulu plus 0800 Russ McClay <mcclay at TAOLODGE.COM> quoted:

<quote>
"The main syntactic problem is to determine whether
"the fuck" is being used as an pleonastic (semantically empty)
direct object of shut or as a pre-head modifier of the
preposition phrase (PP) headed by up. (Yes, the up of
shut up is a one-word PP. It is not an adverb X all the
traditional grammars are flat wrong on that. The
arguments are given in chapter 7 of The Cambridge Grammar
of the English Language, or more tersely in A Student's
Introduction to English Grammar.) And I think we can do this."

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1608
</quote>

If I were writing a book on English grammar, I would lay down the law that "shut up" is a two-word phrasal verb and therefore "up" is to be parsed as part of the verb.  I would also state that in English phrasal verbs, like infinitives, can be freely split:

     Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
     Never end a sentence with a preposition
     Nover have a sentence end with a preposition.

I declare that all three of the above are equally grammatical and equally acceptable.  In all three sentences "with" is part of the phrasal verb; in none of the sentences is it a preposition.

(note: sentence 1 appears in a published textbook by a Louisville KY English teacher named Annie Polk.  My parents (one of whom I believe had that teacher) kept a copy of that book just to prove that slip-of-the-mind actually appeared in print.  Unfortunately, the copy has since been lost).

Similarly, "shut up" is a phrasal verb, as there is nothing in "shut" without a direct object that implies shutting one's mouth and refraining from any more speech.  The only way to make "up" a preposition is to say something like "Shut the window up the stairs" which sounds more like Penn Dutch dialect than proper English, which would be "Shut the window that is up the stairs".

How to classify "the fuck" in "shut the fuck up"?  It is a meaningless intensifier, and what it intensifies is the phrasal verb "shut up".  Hence "the fuck" can only be parsed as a two-word adverbial phrase.

I might add that "fuck up", "fuck with", and "fuck over" are phasal verbs that are divorced in meaning from "to fuck".

OT:  On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:35:56 Zulu plus or minus 0000 Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
wrote:

<quote>
See "I'd've" below.  I haven't seen a double apostrophe before.
</quote>

I am not aware of any prescriptive rule against having two apostrophes in a word.  And are you familiar with the long-accepted English word "fo'c's'le" (which MWCD10 spells with only two apostrophes, "fo'c'sle")?

           James A. Landau
           test engineer
           Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
           8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
           West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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