Re: CHAT: New Member With Questions

I think that not ending sentences with prepositions goes back a little
further yet. Exploring English's cousing German,

Where are you coming from?

would be

Wovon kommst du?

Wovon = wo (where) + von (from)
kommst = come
du = you.

Wovon is merely a contraction.

We used to have two words in english meaning "where"

Where = a position
Whither = a motion

Where art thou = where are you

Whither comest thou = where(from) {like Wovon above} are you coming: where
are you coming from. In neither literary nor spoken English would we ever
say "Where from are you coming?"

German even goes a step further with a another word "Wohin" which is
analgous to our "Whither"

Wohin geht Peter?  Where (to) is Peter going?  We would say either

Where is Peter going?
of
Where is Peter going to?

Scott Hlad

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of David Peterson
> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 12:09 AM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: New Member With Questions
>
>
> In a message dated 3/15/01 10:34:42 PM, zsau@YAHOO.COM.AU writes:
>
> << What is the difference between prepositions and particles?
> And are they really prepositions in English, given that they sometimes go
> after what they modify (like in 'where do you come from?')? >>
>
> Particles are things that aren't anything else, like "to" in the
> infinitive.
> However, I don't think "particles" is a good term to use.  There are
> articles, like "the", "a", "an", "this", "that", etc., also called
> determiners.  Anyway, I'm not sure about particles.
>
> However, prepositions are prepositions in English.  For instance, in that
> sentence "Where do you come from?", it should read "From where do you
> come?"--we just don't talk that way much anymore.  Remember how teachers
> always said never to end a sentence with a preposition?  The reason that
> "rule" came to be is because, way back when they were writing grammar for
> students in American/British schools, they decided that since you
> can't end a
> sentence with a preposition in Latin, you shouldn't be able to in English
> (makes no sense, but, nevertheless, that's where the rule came from.  They
> give the same reason for not allowing split infinitives, e.g.,
> "to boldly go
> where no one has gone before" [I'm watching Voyager right now :)]).
>
> To make a little more sense, I think there are two things called
> "prepositions" in English: true prepositions and locative adverbs.  For
> instance, the "in" in "I am in the house" is different from "I walk in the
> room".  The first is a true preposition, and you can't end a
> sentence with it
> (Note: Relative clause formation and transformations are exceptions, e.g.
> "The house I'm in is big", or "This is the house I'm in").
> However, locative
> adverbs you can end a sentence with, because they're a throwback
> to German,
> which have verbs with two parts: a locative adverb and the verb.  For
> instance, take the word "zuruckkommen", meaning, roughly, "to come back"
> (zuruck is back, kommen is come).  When using it in a sentence,
> you say, "Ich
> komme nach Hause zuruck": I come to my house back.  The system sort of
> evolved, so that we say "I come back to my house", but the principle still
> stands: "back" isn't a preposition; the verb is "to come back".
>
> And, of course, there are countless variations and exceptions.
> So, that's my
> say.
>
> -David

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