Fwd: The manner in which it was arrived

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Maybe we deal here with a sort of blend:
 
"the manner in which it was reached" + "the manner in which it was arrived at".
 
A traditional blend of these two would yield "...was reached at." But in the construction "in which it was arrived" we may see the loss of "at" due to its absence in "...was reached."
 
G. Cohen

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 Jonathan Lighter wrote, Tue 8/2/2011 11:16 AM

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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