Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

Andreas Johansson wrote:

>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?!? Or are
>people just being selectively resistant to education?
>
>
I've never heard 'I'm going out' to be criticised. I can't dèfinitely
remember if I was ever taught not to end sentences with prepositions,
but the rule was certainly never strictly enforced. I cán definitely
remember that I was taught what nouns, verbs and adjectives were in
grade five, but I càn't remeber if we were taught about adverbs or
prepositions. OTOH, most people had to ask what class a word was all
throughout secondary school.

So basically, under my education, we weren't really taught how to talk,
but rather how to read (initially what letters were, by year twelve how
to analyse opinionative articles and the like) and how to write (with a
similar change over time). Grammar was a minor side-track...

But this will very over time and space, and I suppose in five years time
we'll be back to prescriptivist grammar...

--
Tristan.
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