Fwd: The manner in which it was arrived

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've noticed this phenomenon before, though only once or twice. Both times,
however, were on NPR, and quite recently at that.  I believe the verbs were
different.

My suspicion is that people (or is it one NPR reporter?) are avoiding ending
a sentence with a "preposition" by the simple expedient of dropping the
"preposition."

Or is that too utterly absurd?

JL

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Fwd: The manner in which it was arrived
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Aren't there similar dropped prepositions in British speech which
> Americans would (usually) not drop?
>
> Joel
>
> At 8/2/2011 10:20 AM, Neal Whitman wrote:
> >On NPR this morning, the interviewer was asking about the
> >debt-ceiling deal, and asking about the significance of "the manner
> >in which it was arrived".
> >
> >The dropped/suppressed "at" is interesting. It's not a case of
> >prepositional cannibalism (e.g. "calls will be answererd in the
> >order that they are received [in]"), first of all because the
> >prepositions are different, and second because the suppressed
> >preposition can't be pied-piped (being a passive like "this bed
> >hasn't been slept in"). My WAG is that the pied-piped "in which" at
> >the beginning of the relative clause was enough to make *any*
> >stranded preposition at the end sound bad to this speaker.
> >
> >Neal Whitman
> >
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