Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

On Friday, June 18, 2004, at 09:08 , Mark P. Line wrote:

> Andreas Johansson said:
>>
>> I've heard a disturbing number of Englishers claim that sentences like
>> "I'm going out" are not kosher, on account of violating the ban on
>> free-floating prepositions. Am I to understand that schools in the
>> anglophone world do take the trouble to teach student not to end
>> sentences
>> with prepositions, but not to actually tell prepositions apart from the
>> particles of phrasal verbs?!?
[snip]

> I couldn't say how any of this jibes with other anglophone countries.
IME it doesn't jibe with the UK.
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On Saturday, June 19, 2004, at 05:27 , Ph. D. wrote:

[snip]
> When I was in school in the late 1960s, we were taught
> that such sentences as "I'm going out" are okay because
> "out" here is an adverb. (I don't think the teachers had
> even heard the term "phrasal verb.")
This is precisely what we were taught in the 1950s when grammar was still
formally taught in UK secondary schools, at least in 'Grammar Schools' and
private schools. We knew well the difference between adverbs and
prepositions. Sentence analysis and parsing were part of our staple died.
Yep - "I'm going out" was (and is) 100% kosher.

I assume those who, in the 21st cent, are objecting are guilty of both
hypercorrection and of confusing adverbs and prepositions.

> What we were
> taught as prohibited are sentences such as "Whom do you
> want to eat with?" since these could be rephrased as
> "With whom do you want to eat?"
We were not even taught that! We were taught that the 'dangling
prepositions' (I don't think it was called that, but that's what was meant)
  was a feature of English that made it different from its near continental
cousins. The sentence often quoted was Churchill's (apocryphal?) "..a rule
up with which I will not put" to show how silly it was to be over-pedantic.

In fact "Whom do you eat with?" is surely artificial. We would have been
taught, I'm certain, that:
"Who do you eat with?" is the normal colloquial form;
"With whom do you eat?" is formal and literary.
*"Whom do you eat with?" is neither colloquial not literary.

But at some point, I think with the spread of comprehensive education, it
was considered that grammar inhibited creative writing and gave those kids
who couldn't analyze & parse a sense of inferiority - so grammar was
downgraded (as was spelling & punctuation) and creativity was king. When I
was involved in secondary education, scarcely any grammar was taught in
English and not much in modern languages. I've been out of secondary
education since 1990, but I don't think there's been any significant shift
since then (not judging from the English my college students write) in
English.

I doubt that many in the UK hear anything about 'dangling prepositions' -
indeed, I doubt that many school-leavers could tell you what a preposition
is, let alone whether the poor critter is dangling or not.

Ray
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