Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

From:Mark P. Line <mark@...>
Date:Friday, June 18, 2004, 20:08
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

Reply

Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>