Re: Bishop's poem about prepositions

On 1/22/06, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jan 2006, 23:31 CET, Adam Walker wrote:
>
> > This came to me on another list and I thought
> > "TRANSLATIONS EXERCISE!"
>
> Yay!!
>
> >> And yet I wondered, 'What should he come
> >> Up from out of in under for?'
>
> Anyone cares to explain that to a furriner? I cannot think
> of a sensible bracketification here :-/
"up from out of in under" doesn't make sense in my 'lect, either, but
if pressed, I'd parse it something like this:

The preposition is hiding underneath the chair, so it's in the
underneath position = it's in under. (This is the bit that doesn't
make sense to me.)

First, it needs to move sideways so that it isn't underneath the chair
any more, so it needs to come out from the notional enclosed space
implied by "in under" -- it needs to come out of that space = out of
(in under).

Next, it needs to move upwards from the resulting position = up from
(out of (in under)).

The sentence you quoted adds a "for" which comes from "what for" =
"why" -- "(what should he come (up from (out of (in under))) for)",
roughly.

I prefer "What did you bring the book that I didn't want to be read to
out of up for?". Sometimes expanded to "What did you bring the book
that I didn't want to to be read to out of about Down Under up for?",
but I think that's cheating.

(Can you parse that? Or do you need brackets for that, too?)
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>