Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

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?!?
I think your understanding would be accurate in the case of most American
teachers of English, at least in primary and secondary schools. Most
Americans may remember hearing the word "preposition", but I doubt that
very many have ever encountered the terms "phrasal verb" or "verbal
particle".

The ban on dangling prepositions is just a prescriptive rule that has
little bearing on (American) English as commonly spoken, except for the
social stigma that sometimes attaches to speech or writing that violates
such prescriptive rules. Enlightened and linguistically trained English
teachers -- even in this country -- might occasionally treat it as such,
but I assume they're still in the vanishingly miniscule minority.


> Or are people just being selectively resistant to education?
I think Americans in general are resistant to education, period.


I couldn't say how any of this jibes with other anglophone countries.

-- Mark

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