Talk:Preposition stranding

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Contents 1 "Controversial" stranded preposition in German? 2 Minor Edit 3 Arguments for and against? 4 Alternatives 5 Expansion and cleanup. 6 Preposition stranding in non-standard French 7 Winston Churchill's quote 8 There is an object

[edit] "Controversial" stranded preposition in German?

This is really a worthless section. Not only are the English translations non-idiomatic, but the "stranded prepositions" listed here only look stranded to a native speaker of English looking for an analogous construction in German, when in fact there is none. However, not only can the da- and wo- compounds be separated, the demonstrative particle can be suppressed in colloquial speech. A woman goes to the butcher shop, points to some ham and says, "Ich kriege 300 Gramm von." Janko 10:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

I don't actually know whether that section is worthwhile, since I don't know German, and don't understand for example how her can mean from and yet not be a preposition. That said, the argument that "the English translations [are] non-idiomatic" is a poor one, since it's easily fixed. Indeed, I just fixed it. Also, I don't see what the suppressibility of da has to do with anything. Please explain further? Ruakh 12:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Analogy to help you understand: German "dabei" equals English "whereat"; they're both inseparable in formal language, but in colloquial German (never in Austria and Bavaria, though), you can often see "da ... bei" or even a complete deletion of the "da-" part. —Nightstallion (?) 16:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I already understood that, but I'm afraid I still don't see your point; why does that make the section worthless? Ruakh 17:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say it was worthless, especially not so after I've corrected it. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 12:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to the signatures. I don't understand what problem Janko has with the section; hopefully he'll comment back and explain. Ruakh 13:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

No harm done, and so do I. —Nightstallion (?) 12:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Let me try again then. No native speaker of German could possibly understand these constructions as dangling (or stranded) prepositions. There is no such thing in German unless, as I said, you are a native speaker of English searching for analogies in German. But they aren't there. "2 Kilo von" results from the colloquial suppression of the pronomial element in "davon". Rather than say, "I would like 2 kg. thereof," you hear, "I would like 2 kg. of." At most it's an ellipsis. Since the "controversy" rests on a completely false premise, statements about stranded prepositions in German are also false. I prefer making comments on the talk page rather than randomly editing the text. Janko 14:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

But the article isn't talking about the suppression of the da; it's talking about the separation of the da from the von. Ruakh 15:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, so the "controversy" is whether in this dialect form (Baden, Hessen, I think), only found in a very limited number of cases ("von" is quite common, I've never personally heard "bei", but I don't come from Hessen or Baden and I don't live there now), the separation of "da" and "von", such separation otherwise being a common feature of German (separable prefix verbs, archaic "Was er immer sagt"-whatever he says), results in a de facto stranded preposition, a construction otherwise unknown in the language? Janko 08:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

Let me just add that the separation of da and von, for instance, is very much seen as incorrect and a dialectal variety in Austria and Bavaria. No Austrian would ever say "Da hab ich nichts von" or similar aberrations. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 20:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A simple way to sidestep this controversy is just to talk about Dutch instead, where this kind of stranding is completely standard. I hope the section is more "worthful" this way. CapnPrep 12:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your edit! As it stands, though, the section is hard to understand if you don't speak Dutch. I don't suppose you could supply literal and idiomatic translations for each sample sentence? Also, you talk about replacing neuter pronouns with r-pronouns, but you don't explain what r-pronouns are, nor what the significance is of this replacement. I don't suppose you could add some explanations? Ruakh 18:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I added the glosses and a link to relevant new info in the Dutch grammar article, but my edits probably will not survive long over there… CapnPrep 21:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Edit

I added the term hanging preposition to the list, as it is commonly used in my area. Is there a way to create a routing page from hanging preposition? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ollock (talk • contribs) .

I've taken care of it, thanks. Ruakh 02:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments for and against?

This article discusses what preposition stranding is, and mentions that some grammarians frown on it, but it does not clarify why those grammarians frown on it, or why those grammarians who don't frown on it differ from those who do. It points to Disputed English grammar, which suggests that the debate will be explained there, but that page, for most disputes, just suggests possible reasons why a dispute might exist on any particular point of grammar. Preposition stranding is actually one of the lucky ones; it's suggested that the distaste for preposition stranding comes from trying to apply rules of Latin to the English language. However, that's all the detail it gives.

I think the article could be improved if it provided more detail on who has argued for the incorrectness of preposition stranding and who has argued for its acceptability. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, part of the problem is that in some sense, it's really just an urban myth that it's incorrect; tens (or hundreds?) of millions of schoolchildren have been told in school that it's incorrect, and learned such clever mnemonics as "A preposition is a [terrible | bad | horrible] thing to end a sentence with" (which gets 130 Google hits) or such straightforward ones as "never end a sentence with a preposition" (which gets 694). So far as I know, there aren't any very eminent authorities that oppose preposition stranding; one of the twentieth century's greatest prescriptivists, Fowler, writes of "the superstitious avoidance of a preposition at the end"^[1], and another, Strunk and White (technically two people, but we'll count them as one for our purposes), seems to avoid the topic altogether.^[2] I suppose there are reasons that could be given, but I've never heard a supporter of the rule do so, beyond simply stating that it's a rule and asking what I mean when I ask what makes it a rule. Ruakh 01:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Or (as I was taught) "never use a preposition to end a sentence with", with gets > 1,000 hits as a phrase. EdwardLockhart 17:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alternatives

Took me a while, but I finally managed to come up with alternatives to the examples that avoid the stranding:

About what are you talking?

and

This is the book about which I told you.

The pseudo-passive is not really repairable, but it sounds horribly wrong anyway.

These alternatives both seem to be a bit of a mouthful. The first one just sounds stilted and the second one is way too long. If any prescriptivists seriously think these should be embraced, I seriously think they should be shot. 91.0.116.92 18:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion and cleanup.

This article is misleading and needs some expansion. First, the dispute among English grammarians is not whether a preposition can occur without an object, but whether a preposition can end a clause and whether a preposition can be separated from its object. A preposition must have an object by definition. In most of the English examples the article provides, the prepositions do have objects, but the objects come before their prepositions in a construction called anastrophe. Consider:

What are you playing with?

The controversy concerning a sentence like the one above is not whether with has an object. Clearly, what is with's object. Rather, the dispute is whether what can be separated from with and whether with can end the sentence. The sentence could be changed and the problem avoided by bringing the preposition and its object together at the beginning of the sentence:

With what are you playing?

A construction in which the preposition has no object is incontrovertibly wrong:

Where are you at?

Where is not the object of at because the prepositional phrase at where is illogical. Just where will suffice:

Where are you?

Formality is another important aspect of the issue. A sentence such as, With what are you playing, may sound overly formal to most English speakers. Phrasal verbs, verbs that change their meaning with the addition of an adverb, are another relevant topic. These adverbs often seem to be prepositions. On ending a sentence with a preposition, Winston Churchill is credited with saying:

That is a rule up with which I will not put.

This construction is very awkward because up with is not a preposition, but rather a phrasal adverb. To put up with means to tolerate and has a very different meaning than to put. There is no question as to whether a phrasal adverb can end a sentence and whether a phrasal verb can be separated from its object. The correct version of the sentence is:

That is a rule which I will not put up with.

Do you think all of these points are valid and should be included in the article?

Mealzwax 02:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I think you're misunderstanding what the first sentence of the article is trying to say; it's not saying the preposition doesn't have an object, but rather that it appears without an object; as in, it appears separately from its object, if it has one. I can see how that sentence lends itself to misunderstanding, though; some clarification might be in order.

Secondly, you're wrong to say that prepositions always have objects; consider "This chair was sat on" (one of the examples given in the article). On is a preposition, but it doesn't have an object; that it's a preposition is clear from the active version ("[Someone] sat on this chair", where "this chair" is the object), but that it doesn't have an object is clear from the fact that the sentence has only one noun phrase ("this chair"), and it's the subject of the verb.

Thirdly, you're wrong to say that "Where is it at?" is wrong; or at least, your argument is unsound, since it would also toss out "Where is she from?".

Fourthly and finally, while you are right that "up" is indeed a particle in the phrasal verb "put up", "with" is nonetheless an ordinary preposition, at least by traditional analysis; the supposedly-correct fronted version would be "This is a rule with which I will not put up." Even this sounds ridiculous, though; in this case, only the p-stranded version sounds sane.

—Ruakh_TALK 19:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Arguably, in this form, the sentence 'This chair was sat (up)on' is using a preposition only under one form of technical slicing of the sentence. Looking at it from a communication intent point of view, the sentence 'This chair was sat upon' is more akin to 'This newspaper was read.' The verb construct 'sat upon' or 'sat on' is being used in compound as an adjective, as the subject of 'was'. It might be more correct to use it in a hyphenated form ('This chair was sat-upon'), but this could also be an example of hypercorrection as such an approach has largely gone out of use.

In other words, yes, 'on' is a preposition, but in this usage 'sat on' is not.

Consider the extended sentence, 'This chair was sat upon by a fat lady.' Technically, in isolation, both 'upon' and 'by' are both prepositions. However, only the latter of the two, 'by', is actually a preposition in this sentence.

I believe that Mealzwax's argument is actually quite valid and that this article largely misrepresents English P-stranding. P-stranding happens when a sentence has a preposition tacked onto it without a subject, usually a pronoun that is assumed (and would be properly and correctly assumed in many other languages such as Spanish where other indicators in the sentence specifically allow it).

Sentences such as 'This cake has cherries in' and 'She has clothes on' (note the latter is very common in the vernacular) are P-stranding and are considered bad grammar.

Both the above sentences can be corrected by the addition of a pronoun: 'This cake has cherries on it.' and 'She has clothes on herself.' are both correct, though the latter sounds a bit strange because the pronoun is usually omitted.

'Where are you at' is not an example of a sentence that is at issue. It's a bit wordy and uses an unneccesary, gratuitous word ('at', in the same sense that 'You are at where' suffers the same stiltedness), but it's not P-stranding. It's just needless in the same sense as the famous song lyric, 'Do you know where you're going to?' (though the latter at least has a reason--to fit the metre of the song).

By the way, if you are making the argument that Mealzwax misinterpreted the first sentence and that a preposition not appearing with a subject means that the subject is present, just seperated by many other words and perhaps in an unexpected order, then don't just scold Mealzwax about the issue. Change the sentence so that this miscommunication doesn't occur.

Personally, I'm not changing it simply because I don't think that it means what you think it means and I believe that Mealzwax read the sentence correctly, and that the rest of the article is severely challenged.

75.28.41.130 22:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Preposition stranding in non-standard French

Is the example Qui-ce que tu as fait le gâteau pour? correct? I would have thought it should be Qui est-ce que tu as fait le gâteau pour?. Mooncow 17:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for sure (I only know French as it's spoken in France), but I believe the article is correct; see e.g. fr:Français Cadien de la Paroisse de Terrebonne#Pronoms interrogatifs. —Ruakh_TALK 19:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

A good reference, thank you, and it does suggest the article is correct. Mooncow 01:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Winston Churchill's quote

I believe it was Winston Churchill who so beautifully summed up how stupid the "no stranded prepositions" rule is:

Putting a preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which I will not put.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.87.237 (talk • contribs) 00:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

---check your source. the common story is that someone else tried to correct his stranded preposition,to which he responded "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put!". 66.73.48.200 21:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)Fingal

[edit] There is an object

The lead sentence reads:

Preposition stranding, sometimes called P-stranding, is the syntactic construction in which a preposition appears without an object.

If this is supposed to refer to constructions such as "You don't know what you're talking about", it doesn't make sense: the object of "about" in that sentence is "what". It needs to be reworded.

--207.176.159.90 (talk) 23:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)