Preposition stranding

Historically, grammarians have described preposition stranding or p-stranding as the syntactic construction in which a so-called stranded, hanging or dangling preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding object; for example, at the end of a sentence. The term preposition stranding was coined in 1964, predated by stranded preposition in 1949.[1][2] Linguists had previously identified such a construction as a sentence-terminal preposition[3] or as a preposition at the end.[4] This kind of construction is found in English, and more generally in other Germanic languages.[5][6][7][8]

Preposition stranding is also found in languages outside the Germanic family, such as Vata and Gbadi (two languages in the Niger–Congo family), and certain dialects of French spoken in North America.

P-stranding occurs in various syntactic contexts, including passive voice,[9] wh-movement,[10][11] and sluicing.[10][11]

Wh-movement and P-stranding

Wh-movement—which involves wh-words like who, what, when, where, why and how—is a syntactic dependency between a sentence-initial wh-word and the gap that it is associated with. Wh-movement can lead to P-stranding if the object of the preposition is moved to sentence-initial position, and the preposition is left behind. P-stranding from wh-movement is observed in English and Scandinavian languages. The more common alternative is called pied piping, a rule that prohibits separating a preposition from its object, for instances in Serbo-Croatian and Arabic languages. English and Dutch use both rules, providing the option of two constructions in these situations.

In English

An open interrogative often takes the form of a wh- question (beginning with a word like what or who).

P-stranding in English allows the separation of the preposition from its object, while pied piping allows carrying the preposition along with the wh- object.[11] From the below examples, we can see the two options.

  • Which town did you come from?[11]
    • From which town did you come?
  • English allows prepositional stranding under regular wh-movement
    What are you talking about?[lower-alpha 1]
    • About what are you talking?

In Danish

P-stranding in Danish is banned only if the wh-word is referring to nominative cases.[12] "Peter has spoken with <whom>", the wh-word <whom> is the accusative case. Therefore, p-stranding is allowed.

Hvem

whom

har

has

Peter

Peter

snakket

speak.PP

med?

with

Hvem har Peter snakket med?

whom has Peter speak.PP with

‘Whom has Peter spoken with?’

In Dutch

  • Directional constructions

Welk

which

bosi

foresti

liep

walked

hij

he

___i

___i

in?

into?

Welk bosi liep hij ___i in?

which foresti walked he ___i into?

'What forest did he walk into?'

  • R-pronouns

Waar

where

praatten

talked

wij

we

over?

about?

Waar praatten wij over?

where talked we about?

'What did we talk about?'

In French

  • Standard French requires
    • Pour qui est-ce que tu as fait le gâteau?
    • For whom did you bake the cake?
  • Some dialects, such as Prince Edward Island French, permit[13]

Qui

who

ce-que

that

t’as

2SG.have

fait

made

le

the

gâteau

cake

pour?

for

Qui ce-que t’as fait le gâteau pour?

who that 2SG.have made the cake for

"Who did you make the cake for?"

In German

Prepositional stranding under regular wh-movement is allowed in some dialects of German but not in Standard German.

For the interrogative word "woher" (from where / from what):


  • Standard German requires

Woher

wherefrom

hat

has

Marie

Marie

das

the

Kleid

dress

bekommen?

gotten?

Woher hat Marie das Kleid bekommen?

wherefrom has Marie the dress gotten?

'From where has Marie got the dress?'

  • Some dialects permit

Wo

where

hat

has

Marie

Marie

das

the

Kleid

dress

her

from

bekommen?

gotten?

Wo hat Marie das Kleid her bekommen?

where has Marie the dress from gotten?

'Where has Marie got the dress from?'

In Greek

Wh-movement in Greek states that the extracted PP must be in Spec-CP,[14] which means the PP (me) needs to move with the wh-word (Pjon). It can thus be seen that Greek allows pied piping in wh-movement but not prepositional stranding.

Pjon

who

milise

she.speak.PAST

me?

with

Pjon milise me?

who she.speak.PAST with

‘Who did she speak with?’

In Spanish

Pied-piping is the only grammatical option in Spanish to construct oblique relative clauses.[15] Since pied-piping is the opposite of p-stranding, p-stranding in Spanish is not possible (* indicates ungrammaticality).

*Qué

which

chica

girl.SG

ha

has

hablado

talk.PP

Peter

Peter

con?

with

*Qué chica ha hablado Peter con?

which girl.SG has talk.PP Peter with

'Who has Peter talked with?’

Emirati Arabic (EA)

P-stranding in EA is possible only by using which-NPs that strand prepositions and follow them with IP-deletion.

ʔaj

which

Mʊkaan

place

laag-et

met-2MS

John

John

fi?

at

ʔaj Mʊkaan laag-et John fi?

which place met-2MS John at

‘Which place did you meet John at?

The preposition (fi) should be moved together with the wh-word (ʔaj) to make this sentence grammatical. [11]

It should be:

f-ʔaj

at-which

Mʊkaan

place

laag-et

met-2MS

John?

John

f-ʔaj Mʊkaan laag-et John?

at-which place met-2MS John

‘At which place did you meet John at?

Libyan Arabic (LA)

P-stranding in wh-movement sentences is normally banned in LA. However, a recent study found that a preposition seems to be stranded in a resumptive wh-question.[16]

man

who

Ali

Ali

tekəllem

talked.3MS

mʕa?

with

man Ali tekəllem mʕa?

who Ali talked.3MS with

‘Who did Ali talk with?’

Sluicing and p-stranding

Sluicing is a specific type of ellipsis that involves wh-phrases. In sluicing, the wh-phrase is stranded while the sentential portion of the constituent question is deleted. It is important to note that the preposition is stranded inside the constituent questions before sluicing. Some languages allow prepositional stranding under sluicing, while other languages ban it.[10][11] The theory of preposition stranding generalization (PSG) suggests that if a language allows preposition stranding under wh-movement, that language will also allow preposition stranding under sluicing.[17] PSG is not obeyed universally; examples of the banning of p-stranding under sluicing are provided below.

Preposition stranding under sluicing

English allows prepositional stranding under sluicing

In English

Prepositional stranding under sluicing is allowed in English because prepositional phrases are not islands in English.[18]

  • John laughed at someone, but I don’t know who he laughed at.[10]

In Danish

Peter

Peter

har

has

snakket

talk.PP

med

with

en

one

eller

or

anden,

another

men

but

jeg

I

ved

know.PRES

ikke

not

hvem

who

Peter

Peter

har

has

snakket

talk.PP

med.[11]

with

Peter har snakket med en eller anden, men jeg ved ikke hvem Peter har snakket med.[11]

Peter has talk.PP with one or another but I know.PRES not who Peter has talk.PP with

‘Peter was talking with someone, but I don’t know who.

In Spanish

Juan

Juan

ha

has

hablado

talk.PP

con

with

una

a

chica

girl

pero

but

no

not

know

cuál

which

Juan

Juan

ha

has

hablado

talk.PP

con.[10]

with

Juan ha hablado con una chica pero no sé cuál Juan ha hablado con.[10]

Juan has talk.PP with a girl but not know which Juan has talk.PP with

‘Juan talked with a girl, but I don’t know which.’

Emirati Arabic

John

John

ʃərab

drank

gahwa.

coffee

wijja

with

sˤadiq,

friend

bəs

but

maa

not

ʕərf

1.know

ʔaj

which

sˤadiq

friend

John

John

ʃərab

drank

gahwa

coffee

wijja.[11]

with

John ʃərab gahwa. wijja sˤadiq, bəs maa ʕərf ʔaj sˤadiq John ʃərab gahwa wijja.[11]

John drank coffee with friend but not 1.know which friend John drank coffee with

‘John drank coffee with a friend, but I don’t know which friend.’

Libyan Arabic

Ali

Ali

tekəllem

talked.3MS

mʕa

with

waħed

someone

lakin

but

ma-ʕrafna-š

NEG-knew.1P-NEG

man

who

(hu)

(PN.he)

illi

that

Ali

Ali

tekəllem

talked.3MS

mʕa-ah.[11]

with-him

Ali tekəllem mʕa waħed lakin ma-ʕrafna-š man (hu) illi Ali tekəllem mʕa-ah.[11]

Ali talked.3MS with someone but NEG-knew.1P-NEG who (PN.he) that Ali talked.3MS with-him

‘Ali talked with someone, but we didn’t know who.’

P-stranding in other situations

In Dutch

A number of common Dutch adpositions can be used either prepositionally or postpositionally, with a slight change in possible meanings. For example, Dutch in can mean either in or into when used prepositionally, but only mean into when used postpositionally. When postpositions, such adpositions can be stranded:

  • short-distance movement:

[...]

[...]

dat

that

hij

he

zo'n

such-a

donker

dark

bos

forest

niet

not

in

into

durft

dares

te

to

lopen

walk

[...]

[...]

[...] dat hij zo'n donker bos niet in durft te lopen [...]

[...] that he such-a dark forest not into dares to walk [...]

'[...] that he doesn't dare walk into such a dark forest [...]'

  • Another way to analyze examples like the one above would be to allow arbitrary "postposition + verb" sequences to act as transitive separable prefix verbs (e.g. in + lopeninlopen), but such an analysis would not be consistent with the position of in in the second example. (The postposition can also appear in the verbal prefix position: [...] dat hij zo'n donker bos niet durft in te lopen [...].)

In English

Pseudopassives (prepositional passives or passive constructions) are the result of the movement of the object of a preposition to fill an empty subject position for a passive verb. The phenomenon is comparable to regular passives, which are formed through the movement of the object of the verb to subject position. In prepositional passives, unlike in wh-movement, the object of the preposition is not a wh-word but rather a pronoun or noun phrase:

In French

  • Some dialects permit proposition-standing.
    • Robert a été parlé beaucoup de au meeting.
    • 'Robert was much talked about at the meeting.'
  • Standard French bans it.
    • On a beaucoup parlé de Robert au meeting.

In English

Relative clauses in English can exhibit preposition stranding with or without an explicit relative pronoun:

  • This is the book that I told you about.[lower-alpha 1]
  • This is the book I told you about.

In French

To standard French ears, all of those constructions sound quite alien and are thus considered as barbarisms or "anglicismes".

However, not all dialects of French allow preposition stranding to the same extent. For instance, Ontario French restricts preposition stranding to relative clauses with certain prepositions. In most dialects, stranding is impossible with the prepositions à (to) and de (of).

A superficially-similar construction is possible in standard French in cases where the object is not moved but implied, such as Je suis pour ("I'm all for (it)") or Il faudra agir selon ("We'll have to act according to (the situation)").

  • Some dialects permit
    • Tu connais pas la fille que je te parle de.
    • 'You don't know the girl that I'm talking to you about.'
  • Standard French requires
    • Tu ne connais pas la fille dont je te parle.
  • Another more widespread non-standard variant is
    • Tu ne connais pas la fille que je te parle.

In Dutch

Dutch prepositions generally do not take the ordinary neuter pronouns (het, dat, wat, etc.) as objects. Instead, they become postpositional suffixes for the corresponding r-pronouns (er, daar, waar, etc.): hence, not *over het (about it), but erover (literally thereabout). However, the r-pronouns can sometimes be moved to the left and thereby strand the postposition:[20]

Wij

We

praatten

talked

er

there

niet

not

over.

about.

Wij praatten er niet over.

We talked there not about.

'We didn't talk about it.'

In German

Some regional varieties of German show a similar phenomenon to some Dutch constructions with da(r)- and wo(r)- forms. That is called a split construction ("Spaltkonstruktion"). Standard German provides composite words for the particle and the bound preposition. The split occurs easily with a composite interrogative word (as shown in the English example) or with a composite demonstrative word (as shown in the Dutch example).

For example the demonstrative "davon" (of that / of those / thereof):

  • Standard German requires

Ich

I

kann

can

mir

me

davon

thereof

nichts

nothing

leisten.

afford.

Ich kann mir davon nichts leisten.

I can me thereof nothing afford.

'I can't afford any of those.'

  • Some dialects permit

Ich

I

kann

can

mir

me

da

there-[clipped]

nichts

nothing

von

of

leisten.

afford.

Ich kann mir da nichts von leisten.

I can me there-[clipped] nothing of afford.

'I can't afford any of those.'

Again, although the stranded postposition has nearly the same surface distribution as a separable verbal prefix ("herbekommen" is a valid composite verb), it would not be possible to analyze these Dutch and German examples in terms of the reanalyzed verbs *overpraten and *vonkaufen, for the following reasons:

  • The stranding construction is possible with prepositions that never appear as separable verbal prefixes (e.g., Dutch van, German von).
  • Stranding is not possible with any kind of object besides an r-pronoun.
  • Prefixed verbs are stressed on the prefix; in the string "von kaufen" in the above sentences, the preposition cannot be accented.
    • Also, pronunciation allows distinguishing an actual usage of a verb like "herbekommen" from a split construction "her bekommen".

Controversy

In English

Although preposition stranding has been found in English since the earliest times,[21] it has often been the subject of controversy, and some usage advisors have attempted to form a prescriptive rule against it. In 1926, H. W. Fowler noted: "It is a cherished superstition that prepositions must, in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late [...] be kept true to their name & placed before the word they govern."[22]

The earliest attested disparagement of preposition stranding in English is datable to the 17th century grammarian Joshua Poole,[3] but it became popular after 1672, when the poet John Dryden objected to Ben Jonson's 1611 phrase "the bodies that those souls were frighted from". Dryden did not explain why he thought the sentence should be restructured to front the preposition.[23][24] In his earlier writing, Dryden himself had employed terminal prepositions but he systematically removed them in later editions of his work, explaining that when in doubt he would translate his English into Latin to test its elegance.[4] Latin has no construction comparable to preposition stranding.

Usage writer Robert Lowth wrote in his 1762 textbook A Short Introduction to English Grammar that the construction was more suitable for informal than for formal English: "This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style."[25] However Lowth used the construction himself, including a humorously self-referential example in the passage quoted above, and his comments do not amount to a proscription.

A stronger view was taken by Edward Gibbon, who not only disparaged sentence-terminal prepositions but, noting that prepositions and adverbs are often difficult to distinguish, also avoided phrasal verbs which put on, over or under at the end of the sentence, even when these are clearly adverbs.[4] By the 19th century, the tradition of English school teaching had come to deprecate the construction, and the proscription is still taught in some schools at the beginning of the 21st century.[26]

However, there were also voices which took an opposite view. Fowler dedicated four columns of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage to a rebuttal of the prescription:

The fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by English in putting its prepositions late & omitting its relatives is an important element in the flexibility of the language. [...] That depends on what they are cut with is not improved by conversion into That depends on with what they are cut; & too often the lust of sophistication, once blooded, becomes uncontrollable, & ends with, That depends on the answer to the question as to with what they are cut." [4]

Overzealous avoidance of stranded prepositions was sometimes ridiculed for leading to unnatural-sounding sentences, including the quip apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill: This is the sort of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put.[27]

Today, most sources consider it to be acceptable in standard formal English.[26][28][29] As O'Conner and Kellerman point out: "Great literature from Chaucer to Milton to Shakespeare to the King James version of the Bible was full of so called terminal prepositions."[28] Mignon Fogarty ("Grammar Girl") says, "nearly all grammarians agree that it's fine to end sentences with prepositions, at least in some cases."[30]

Sources

  • Cutts, Martin (2009). Oxford Guide to Plain English (Third ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955850-6.
  • O'Conner, Patricia T.; Kellerman, Stewart (2009). Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-7810-0.

Notes

  1. In transformational approaches to syntax, it is commonly assumed that the movement of a constituent out of a phrase leaves a silent trace, in this case following the preposition: Whati are you talking about ___i?
    This bed looks as if it i has been slept in ___i.
    This is the booki thati I told you about ___i.

See also

References

  1. "preposition stranding". Retrieved 2022-05-15.
  2. "stranded preposition". Retrieved 2022-05-15.
  3. "Prepositions, Ending a Sentence With". Miriam Webster. Retrieved 2022-01-13.
  4. Fowler, Henry Watson (1926). "Preposition at end". A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. OUP. p. 458. (cited from the revised ed. 1940).
  5. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2005). A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-61288-8. pages 137–38.
  6. Roberts, Ian G. (2007). Diachronic Syntax. Oxford: Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-925398-2. page 238.
  7. Maling, Joan; Zaenen, Annie (1985). "Preposition-Stranding and Passive". Nordic Journal of Linguistics. 8 (2): 197–209. doi:10.1017/S0332586500001335. S2CID 145476590. page 197.
  8. Michael Nguyen (19 October 2021). "Hvornår er præpositionsstranding i dansk umuligt?". Ny Forskning i Grammatik (in Danish) (28). doi:10.7146/NFG.VI28.128787. ISSN 2446-1709. Wikidata Q109265906.
  9. Rohdenburg, G (2017). "Formal asymmetries between active and passive clauses in Modern English: The avoidance of preposition stranding with verbs featuring omissible prepositions". Anglia. 135 (4): 700–744. doi:10.1515/ang-2017-0068. S2CID 165895615.
  10. Griffiths, James; Güneş, Güliz; Lipták, Anikó; Merchant, Jason (2021-10-01). "Dutch preposition stranding and ellipsis: 'Merchant's Wrinkle' ironed out". The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. 24 (3): 269–318. doi:10.1007/s10828-021-09129-1. ISSN 1572-8552. S2CID 243809446.
  11. Alaowffi, Nouf Yousef; Alharbi, Bader Yousef (2021-06-24). "Preposition stranding under sluicing: Evidence from Hijazi Arabic". Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. 17 (2): 941–957. doi:10.52462/jlls.65. ISSN 1305-578X. S2CID 237819725.
  12. Law, Paul (2006). "Chapter 51: Prepositional Stranding". The Blackwell Companion to Syntax. 1: 632–685. doi:10.1002/9780470996591.ch51.
  13. King, Ruth (2000-12-21). The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing: A Prince Edward Island French case study. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Vol. 209. John Benjamins. p. 139. doi:10.1075/cilt.209. ISBN 978-90-272-9951-2.
  14. Michelioudakis, Sitaridou, Dimitris, Ioanna (2016). "Recasting the typology of multiple wh-fronting: Evidence from Pontic Greek". Glossa. 1: 1–33. doi:10.5334/gjgl.72. S2CID 55766150.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. PERPIÑÁN, SILVIA (2014). "L2 Grammar and L2 Processing in the Acquisition of Spanish Prepositional Relative Clauses". Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 18 (4): 577–596. doi:10.1017/S1366728914000583. S2CID 145188813.
  16. Algryani, A. (2012). He Syntax of Ellipsis in Libyan Arabic: A generative analysis of sluicing, Vp ellipsis, stripping and negative contrast (dissertation).
  17. NYKIEL, JOANNA (2016). "Preposition stranding and ellipsis alternation". English Language & Linguistics. 21: 27–45. doi:10.1017/S1360674315000477. S2CID 124592131.
  18. Merchant (2000-01-01). "Islands and LF-movement in Greek sluicing". Journal of Greek Linguistics. 1 (1): 41–64. doi:10.1075/jgl.1.04mer. ISSN 1569-9846. S2CID 92992108.
  19. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1433–1436. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
  20. van Riemsdijk, Henk; Kenesei, Istvan; Broekhuis, Hans (2015). Syntax of Dutch: adpositions and adpositional phrases. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 294ff. ISBN 978-9048522255. Archived from the original on 2016-08-26.
  21. O'Conner and Kellerman 2009. p. 22. "It's perfectly natural to put a preposition at the end of a sentence, and it has been since Anglo-Saxon times."
  22. Fowler, Henry Watson (1926). "Preposition at end". A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. OUP. p. 457. (cited from the revised ed. 1940). Similarly Burchfield in the 1996 version: "One of the most persistent myths about prepositions in English is that they properly belong before the word or words they govern and should not be placed at the end of a clause or sentence." Burchfield 1996. p. 617.
  23. Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
  24. John Dryden, "Defense of the Epilogue" to The Conquest of Granada.
  25. Lowth, Robert (1794) [Digitalized version of book published in 1794]. A Short Introduction to English Grammar: With Critical Notes. J.J. Tourneisin. pp. 133–134. Retrieved 5 August 2016.
  26. Cutts 2009. p. 109.
  27. "A misattribution no longer to be put up with". Language Log. 12 December 2004. Archived from the original on 7 September 2015. Retrieved 5 January 2013.
  28. O'Conner and Kellerman 2009. p. 21.
  29. Fogarty 2010. "Top Ten Grammar Myths."
  30. Fogarty 2011. pp. 45–46.

Further reading

  • An Internet pilgrim's guide to stranded prepositions
  • Haegeman, Liliane, and Jacqueline Guéron. 1999. English Grammar: a Generative Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18839-8.
  • Hornstein, Norbert, and Amy Weinberg. 1981. "Case theory and preposition stranding." Linguistic Inquiry 12:55–91. Hornstein, N.; Weinberg, A. (1 January 1981). "Case Theory and Preposition Stranding". Linguistic Inquiry. 12 (1): 55–91. ISSN 0024-3892. JSTOR 4178205.
  • Koopman, Hilda. 2000. "Prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions, and particles." In The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads, pp. 204–260. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16183-5.
  • Lundin, Leigh (2007-09-23). "The Power of Prepositions". On Writing. Cairo: Criminal Brief.
  • Takami, Ken-ichi. 1992. Preposition Stranding: From Syntactic to Functional Analyses. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-013376-8.
  • van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1978. A Case Study in Syntactic Markedness: The Binding Nature of Prepositional Phrases. Dordrecht: Foris. ISBN 90-316-0160-8.
  • Fowler, Henry. 1926. "Preposition at end." A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wordsworth Edition reprint, 1994, ISBN 1-85326-318-4
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