preposition at end - differed preposition in infinitive clause
alt.usage.english
I'd be thankful if somebody might give me some insight into why the
preposition can be placed at the end for some of those sentences, but
not in the last two. In brackets, I have indicated some manipulations.
Here they are:
He is fun to hang out with. (> It is fun to hang out with him > To hang
out with him is fun.)
My boss is difficult to put up with (> It is difficult to put up with my
boss > To put up with my boss is difficult.)
*Your homework is unacceptable to put off. (> It is unacceptable to put
off your homework > To put off your homework is unacceptable.)
*Your friends are mean to speak ill of. (> It is mean to speak ill of
your friends. > To speak ill of your friends is mean.)
CHL
Athel Cornish-Bowden
I agree that you can't put the preposition at the end in the last two,
but I can't analyse why not -- you need an expert in linguistics for
that. John Lawler can probably explain it, but otherwise you might want
to post you question at sci. lang (though if you do you should probably
choose a different pseudonym).
--
athel
James Hogg
It's got nothing to do with the preposition, as you will see with the
third and fourth examples if you put in a single-word verb instead. The
third one remains meaningless and the fourth would not mean what you
want to say:
*Your homework is unacceptable to postpone.
*Your friends are mean to criticize.
In the first two examples the adjective can be applied equally well to
the person (he is fun, my boss is difficult) as to the dummy subject
"it" (it is fun, it is difficult). In the third and fourth examples you
are applying the adjective to the wrong thing, not to a dummy subject:
it's the postponing that is unacceptable, not the homework itself; it's
the act of speaking ill that is mean, not your friends.
--
James
Glenn Knickerbocker
>*Your homework is unacceptable to put off.
There's no preposition there. You don't put off it, you put it off.
�R http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/arkville.html /// I look down my
nose at people who think they are better than other people. --Kibo
CHL
>
> It's got nothing to do with the preposition, as you will see with the
> third and fourth examples if you put in a single-word verb instead. The
> third one remains meaningless and the fourth would not mean what you
> want to say:
>
> *Your homework is unacceptable to postpone.
> *Your friends are mean to criticize.
>
> In the first two examples the adjective can be applied equally well to
> the person (he is fun, my boss is difficult) as to the dummy subject
> "it" (it is fun, it is difficult). In the third and fourth examples you
> are applying the adjective to the wrong thing, not to a dummy subject:
> it's the postponing that is unacceptable, not the homework itself; it's
> the act of speaking ill that is mean, not your friends.
Thank you so much for your analysis.
I had a hunch about the importance of the adjective and the 'predicate',
but couldn't pinpoint how those elements interacted with the semantics
of the sentence.
CHL
CHL
> On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:56:54 +0100, alt.usage.english wrote:
>> *Your homework is unacceptable to put off.
>
> There's no preposition there. You don't put off it, you put it off.
>
You're right. My mistake.
CHL
CHL
> On 2011-01-09 13:56:54 +0100, "alt.usage.english" <n...@no.net> said:
>
> (though if you do you should probably > choose a different pseudonym).
Sorry... too hasty in the configuration of my newsgroup reader.
CHL
Stan Brown
>
> Hello,
Hello. Why not try posting under your real name, or at least *a*
real name? The alias is kind of off-putting.
> I'd be thankful if somebody might give me some insight into why the
> preposition can be placed at the end for some of those sentences, but
> not in the last two. In brackets, I have indicated some manipulations.
>
> He is fun to hang out with. (> It is fun to hang out with him > To hang
> out with him is fun.)
>
> My boss is difficult to put up with (> It is difficult to put up with my
> boss > To put up with my boss is difficult.)
>
> *Your homework is unacceptable to put off. (> It is unacceptable to put
> off your homework > To put off your homework is unacceptable.)
>
> *Your friends are mean to speak ill of. (> It is mean to speak ill of
> your friends. > To speak ill of your friends is mean.)
It is not a matter of preposition at end, but of the whole phrasal
verb being in the wrong place.
In the first two, "He is fun" and "My boss is difficult" make sense
on their own. The infinitives explain in what way he is fun or the
boss is difficult.
But in the last two, "Your homework is unacceptable" and "Your
friends are mean" are just wrong. The infinitives there are not
modifiers, but are the whole point of the sentence.
Both your corrections solve that problem, because they show that it's
the putting off that is unacceptable and the speaking ill that is
mean. Better still, I think, would be to use gerunds:
Putting off your homework is unacceptable.
Speaking ill of your friends is mean.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Christophe Lapp
> On Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:56:54 +0100, alt.usage.english wrote:
>
> Hello. Why not try posting under your real name, or at least *a*
> real name? The alias is kind of off-putting.
Everyone has been so helpful, and I am grateful.
Christophe Lapp
Lars Enderin
Christophe Lapp <""\"\"\"@besh...@hotmail.com">
contains a few characters too many (which are not shown in the normal
header). Get rid of ""\"\"\"@.
John Lawler
wrote:
This is not about prepositions, as has been noted.
The sentences involve deleted (i.e, implied) words,
idiomatic usages, phrasal verbs, and syntactic rules
like Extraposition and Subject-Raising.
When asking grammatical questions, it's preferable
to avoid such complexities; they just muddy the waters.
This question goes off in about 6 different directions, and
would take about 20 pages to explain.
The short answer is that Subject-Raising is governed
by the predicates "fun" and "difficult" (so the first two
sentences are grammatical), but not by the predicates
"acceptable" or "mean" (so the last two aren't), though
all four predicates can take infinitive complements.
For more than you wanted to know about Subject-Raising,
see http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/cliffs-equi-raising.pdf
and http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/equi-raisingprob.pdf
For infinitive complements,
see http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/complmnt.html
For how to unwind English sentences,
see http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/Howtofigureoutasentence.pdf
and http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/Nobbut.pdf
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and
had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man,
One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
-- Discworld politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
John Lawler
>
> For how to unwind English sentences,
> seehttp://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/Howtofigureoutasentence.pdf
>
> -John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler
> Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and
> had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man,
> One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
> -- Discworld politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
Whoops! Made a mistake here in the short answer.
The difference between the two pairs (1&2: good),
(3&4: bad) is not that Subject Raising applies to
the first two, but rather that Tough-Movement
(which moves the Object of a complement
clause up to become the subject of the higher
clause) applies to them.
Tough-Movement (so-called because "tough"
is one predicate that governs it, as in "He is
tough to beat") has applied to the first two,
grammatically -- "fun" and "difficult" govern it--
but also to the last two, which do not govern
Tough-Movement. Subject-Raising is not
involved.
There, now it's all explained.
Sorry about that.
I mentioned it was complicated, right?
Cheers,
-j
Eric Walker
[...]
> I'd be thankful if somebody might give me some insight into why the
> preposition can be placed at the end for some of those sentences, but
> not in the last two. . . .
I quote fro _English Grammar_ by George O. Curme (a resource I heartily
recommend to all), regarding *attributive adjective clauses*:
If we desire to use a preposition, we place it at the end of the
clause: This is the pen _I write with [it]_. There is often as here a
personal pronoun suppressed, which brings the preposition into the last
place. The close connection in thought with the preceding antecedent
suggests the meaning, so that we are not conscious of an omission.
If we should insert a relative pronoun . . . it would be in the
accusative. But the dative relation is also common, the prepositional
dative sign _to_ or _for_ standing at the end of the clause after the
analogy of true prepositions: the man _I gave it to_; the boy_I told
the story to_.
[...]
The suppression of the pronoun is not confined to relative clauses, but
occurs also in adverbial clauses: The case is as sad as I have ever
heard _of_. He writes with a worse pen that I write _with_.
As we no longer feel the force of the original construction in such
sentences, we now interpret the position of the preposition at the end
of the clause as a device to make the important first place available
for an emphatic word or group of words. Hence, we now often put
emphatic words at the beginning of the sentence and the unimportant
preposition at the end, even where originally this construction was
impossible: Where did he come -from_? We even put the dative sign _to_
at the end in order that the emphatic dative may have the first place:
These reports he does not seem to have paid much attention _to_.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker
Christophe Lapp
> I mentioned it was complicated, right?
>
> Cheers,
> -j
Thanks a million. I wasn't looking for anything less.
I did all those manipulations in order to try and find a path to explain
to students the syntax as well as the semantics involved. My original
interest was the syntax of the differed preposition, but without any
manipulations and any semantics, the syntax is useless to the students,
if I were to ask them to be able to apply the syntax properly.
Christophe