Talk:Preposition stranding

"Controversial" stranded preposition in German?

This is really a worthless section. Not only are the English translations non-idiomatic, but the "stranded prepositions" listed here only look stranded to a native speaker of English looking for an analogous construction in German, when in fact there is none. However, not only can the da- and wo- compounds be separated, the demonstrative particle can be suppressed in colloquial speech. A woman goes to the butcher shop, points to some ham and says, "Ich kriege 300 Gramm von." Janko 10:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

I don't actually know whether that section is worthwhile, since I don't know German, and don't understand for example how her can mean from and yet not be a preposition. That said, the argument that "the English translations [are] non-idiomatic" is a poor one, since it's easily fixed. Indeed, I just fixed it. Also, I don't see what the suppressibility of da has to do with anything. Please explain further? Ruakh 12:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Analogy to help you understand: German "dabei" equals English "whereat"; they're both inseparable in formal language, but in colloquial German (never in Austria and Bavaria, though), you can often see "da ... bei" or even a complete deletion of the "da-" part. —Nightstallion (?) 16:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I already understood that, but I'm afraid I still don't see your point; why does that make the section worthless? Ruakh 17:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say it was worthless, especially not so after I've corrected it. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 12:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to the signatures. I don't understand what problem Janko has with the section; hopefully he'll comment back and explain. Ruakh 13:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

No harm done, and so do I. —Nightstallion (?) 12:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Let me try again then. No native speaker of German could possibly understand these constructions as dangling (or stranded) prepositions. There is no such thing in German unless, as I said, you are a native speaker of English searching for analogies in German. But they aren't there. "2 Kilo von" results from the colloquial suppression of the pronomial element in "davon". Rather than say, "I would like 2 kg. thereof," you hear, "I would like 2 kg. of." At most it's an ellipsis. Since the "controversy" rests on a completely false premise, statements about stranded prepositions in German are also false. I prefer making comments on the talk page rather than randomly editing the text. Janko 14:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

But the article isn't talking about the suppression of the da; it's talking about the separation of the da from the von. Ruakh 15:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, so the "controversy" is whether in this dialect form (Baden, Hessen, I think), only found in a very limited number of cases ("von" is quite common, I've never personally heard "bei", but I don't come from Hessen or Baden and I don't live there now), the separation of "da" and "von", such separation otherwise being a common feature of German (separable prefix verbs, archaic "Was er immer sagt"-whatever he says), results in a de facto stranded preposition, a construction otherwise unknown in the language? Janko 08:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)Janko

Let me just add that the separation of da and von, for instance, is very much seen as incorrect and a dialectal variety in Austria and Bavaria. No Austrian would ever say "Da hab ich nichts von" or similar aberrations. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 20:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A simple way to sidestep this controversy is just to talk about Dutch instead, where this kind of stranding is completely standard. I hope the section is more "worthful" this way. CapnPrep 12:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your edit! As it stands, though, the section is hard to understand if you don't speak Dutch. I don't suppose you could supply literal and idiomatic translations for each sample sentence? Also, you talk about replacing neuter pronouns with r-pronouns, but you don't explain what r-pronouns are, nor what the significance is of this replacement. I don't suppose you could add some explanations? Ruakh 18:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I added the glosses and a link to relevant new info in the Dutch grammar article, but my edits probably will not survive long over there... CapnPrep 21:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

It is plainly wrong to list German here, even after the corrections. "Davon" is an adverb (as is the English "thereof"), and although etymologically composed of an adverb and a pronoun that doesn't make the separated part in a German dialect a preposition again (as opposed to English). German does separate compound words, most commonly seen in standard German for verbs, as mentioned above. These compound verbs also often involve former prepositions as prefixes. ("ansehen" -> "Er sieht es an.") This separation does not however make the separated prefix a preposition. In fact there is no proper word for a prepositon to be 'pre-positioned' to. And before anyone feels tempted to throw in the obvious postposition here ... there are other verbs that have other prefixes which are not derived from prepositions (e.g. adverbs) and still function the same way. Although we are mainly aiming at form here, one must not leave contradictory evidence of function out of the consideration to make it fit another related language that one is familiar with.

So please, someone who is feeling responsible for this article, stop the debate about etymological similarities to English and seemingly parallel constructions. See the facts and cut German out of this article (as I won't do it to prevent any chance of an edit war). We don't have preposition stranding, not even in the mentioned dialects and exceptional separations. It's things like this that ruin our i.e. Wikipedia's standing among academics. --chris 論 10:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I completely disagree. The colloquial sentence: Der Mann, wo ich mit gesprochen hab... is just the same as The man (whom) I talked to .... The only differences being that German uses a special pronoun (wo) and that this pronoun can not fall away. So there may not be stranded prepositions in standard German, but most certainly in colloquial German.

The word "wovon" is an adverb, correct. However, it is not an original adverb, but a pronominal adverb formed of a pronoun (wo) and a preposition (von). If we separate these two, we have nothing but a pronoun and a (stranded) preposition. Just because the German stranded preposition has a clearly different genesis than that of English, it doesn't make it less of stranded (= isolated) preposition.

-- Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.206.72.206 (talk) 01:22, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

2023

But that is only possible with wo beginning a relative clause which is not even used north of Main. And "wo" might better be called a conjunction than a pronoun because it is indeclinable and must always be placed at the beginning of the relative clause (the same discussion does exist for "that" beginning a relative clause in modern English).

But "wo" is not a pronoun, it is an adverb. Only the "wo" that can start a relative clause is seldom called a pronoun (because some Europeans think that every relative clause ought to begin with a relative pronoun). But let a native speaker tell you: "Wo" in relative clauses is unusual in most forms of German language and most parts of Germany or German-speaking world. Combined adverbs like "wozu" or "dazu" may be split in colloquial German, I myself do this quite often. But a combination of preposition and noun phrase cannot be split, never. You may say Da würdest du drin leben (You would live therein) as well as Darin würdest du leben (but onye the latter is perceived to be real or high standard), but you could never say *Welchem Haus würdest du in leben?, you would have to say In welchem Haus würdest du leben? instead. (in English Which house would you live in? is preferred over In which house would you live?) Universal-Interessierter^de (talk (de)) 01:25, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

@Universal-Interessierter Your objections are valid. But there is also a more fundamental problem: the section of the article as it stands at the moment relies on the example "Wo hat Marie das Kleid her bekommen?", glossed as "where has Marie the dress from gotten?", and assumes that her is a preposition. But her is not a preposition. Therefore the whole section as it stands is nonsense. I am going to delete it, because I don't believe any such thing as preposition stranding actually occurs in German. This is an English concept improperly imposed on German grammar. Doric Loon (talk) 17:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Minor Edit

I added the term hanging preposition to the list, as it is commonly used in my area. Is there a way to create a routing page from hanging preposition? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ollock (talk o contribs) .

I've taken care of it, thanks. Ruakh 02:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Arguments for and against?

This article discusses what preposition stranding is, and mentions that some grammarians frown on it, but it does not clarify why those grammarians frown on it, or why those grammarians who don't frown on it differ from those who do. It points to Disputed English grammar, which suggests that the debate will be explained there, but that page, for most disputes, just suggests possible reasons why a dispute might exist on any particular point of grammar. Preposition stranding is actually one of the lucky ones; it's suggested that the distaste for preposition stranding comes from trying to apply rules of Latin to the English language. However, that's all the detail it gives.

I doubt that reasoning because the preposition and object in Latin are linked by case and so do not need to be next to one another unless there are multiple phrases taking the same case. That *is* the reasoning behind avoiding the split infinitive, however, since a Latin infinitive is a single word that contains both parts. See below for the reasons I have heard. -- SoSaysSunny (talk) 12:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the article could be improved if it provided more detail on who has argued for the incorrectness of preposition stranding and who has argued for its acceptability. -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, part of the problem is that in some sense, it's really just an urban myth that it's incorrect; tens (or hundreds?) of millions of schoolchildren have been told in school that it's incorrect, and learned such clever mnemonics as "A preposition is a [terrible | bad | horrible] thing to end a sentence with" (which gets 130 Google hits) or such straightforward ones as "never end a sentence with a preposition" (which gets 694). So far as I know, there aren't any very eminent authorities that oppose preposition stranding; one of the twentieth century's greatest prescriptivists, Fowler, writes of "the superstitious avoidance of a preposition at the end"^[1], and another, Strunk and White (technically two people, but we'll count them as one for our purposes), seems to avoid the topic altogether.^[2] I suppose there are reasons that could be given, but I've never heard a supporter of the rule do so, beyond simply stating that it's a rule and asking what I mean when I ask what makes it a rule. Ruakh 01:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Or (as I was taught) "never use a preposition to end a sentence with", with gets > 1,000 hits as a phrase. EdwardLockhart 17:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the contributors above, and would like to suggest some additions/changes to the article:

I'd like to see the preference against its use mentioned in the lead ... "which is frowned upon by some authorities" ... or somesuch (with refs to them).

I'd like to see the justification for its avoidance mentioned somewhere: Hanging prepositions, like hanging participles, are frowned upon because they can cause confusion in sentences with several nouns and pronouns. If the distance between the preposition and the object is great, the sentence may end awkwardly, leaving the reader trying to remember why the preposition is even there. They often demonstrate the writer's limited vocabulary or lack of creativity in phrasing the sentence. When the preposition is implied and unnecessary it sounds wordy, awkward, an/or uneducated.

I'd also like to see a section with tips on when and how to avoid hanging participles. Maybe something like this:

• Leave it as is.

Most Wh-constructions and pseudopassives are fine because the sentences tend to be brief and uncomplicated.

• Omit an implied preposition.

Where do you live at? ..................... Where do you live?

Where do you want to go to? ..................... Where do you want to go?

Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. ..................... Never use a preposition to end a sentence.

• Move the preposition.

Why did you bring that topic up? ..................... Why did you bring up that topic?

• Chose a verb that doesn't need a helper.

What did you do that for? ..................... Why did you do that?

What are you talking about? ..................... What are you (plural) discussing? ..................... What do you (singular) mean?

This is the book I told you about. ..................... This is the book I mentioned. ..................... This is the book we discussed.

• Activate the sentence.

This chair was sat on. ..................... Someone sat on this chair.

• Rearrange the sentence.

This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.

This is the sort of nonsense I will not put up with. ..................... I will not put up with this sort of nonsense.

Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. ..................... Never end a sentence with a preposition.

What do you think? -- SoSaysSunny (talk) 12:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternatives

Took me a while, but I finally managed to come up with alternatives to the examples that avoid the stranding:

About what are you talking?

and

This is the book about which I told you.

The pseudo-passive is not really repairable, but it sounds horribly wrong anyway.

These alternatives both seem to be a bit of a mouthful. The first one just sounds stilted and the second one is way too long. If any prescriptivists seriously think these should be embraced, I seriously think they should be shot. 91.0.116.92 18:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that "Of what are you speaking?" is technically preferable to "About what are you talking?" But, "What are you talking about?" doesn't really mean "Of what are you speaking;" it seems to mean "I find your statement is contrary to established facts or expectations."

The moon is made of green cheese.

Of what are you speaking? The moon.

vs.

What are you talking about? Of course it isn't!

75.61.135.243 (talk) 07:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

"What are you talking about?" can also be used in a literal sense, for example when joining a group already deepn in conversation. --Preceding unsigned comment added by EdwardLockhart (talk o contribs) 13:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You're confusing the literal meaning of "What are you talking about?" with its idiomatic use. Literally, "What are you talking about?" means "Of what are you speaking?", and in most languages only the latter would be possible. But "What are you talking about?" in the sense of "You're nuts." is an idiom, and the non-inverted form does not convey this meaning.

As for the pseudopassives, they're a unique feature of English. English is very reluctant to omit a subject, so an indirect object or prepositional object is pulled in. Other languages would keep the word in its original form, and leave the sentence without a subject.

• German: Ihm ist geantwortet. / He (indirect object) is answered.
• Russian: (Can't think of an example, but English "subject + passive" is often translated to "object + impersonal expression with infinitive".)

Sluggoster (talk) 15:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Expansion and cleanup.

This article is misleading and needs some expansion. First, the dispute among English grammarians is not whether a preposition can occur without an object, but whether a preposition can end a clause and whether a preposition can be separated from its object. A preposition must have an object by definition. In most of the English examples the article provides, the prepositions do have objects, but the objects come before their prepositions in a construction called anastrophe. Consider:

What are you playing with?

The controversy concerning a sentence like the one above is not whether with has an object. Clearly, what is with's object. Rather, the dispute is whether what can be separated from with and whether with can end the sentence. The sentence could be changed and the problem avoided by bringing the preposition and its object together at the beginning of the sentence:

With what are you playing?

A construction in which the preposition has no object is incontrovertibly wrong:

Where are you at?

Where is not the object of at because the prepositional phrase at where is illogical. Just where will suffice:

Where are you?

Formality is another important aspect of the issue. A sentence such as, With what are you playing, may sound overly formal to most English speakers. Phrasal verbs, verbs that change their meaning with the addition of an adverb, are another relevant topic. These adverbs often seem to be prepositions. On ending a sentence with a preposition, Winston Churchill is credited with saying:

That is a rule up with which I will not put.

This construction is very awkward because up with is not a preposition, but rather a phrasal adverb. To put up with means to tolerate and has a very different meaning than to put. There is no question as to whether a phrasal adverb can end a sentence and whether a phrasal verb can be separated from its object. The correct version of the sentence is:

That is a rule which I will not put up with.

Do you think all of these points are valid and should be included in the article?

Mealzwax 02:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I think you're misunderstanding what the first sentence of the article is trying to say; it's not saying the preposition doesn't have an object, but rather that it appears without an object; as in, it appears separately from its object, if it has one. I can see how that sentence lends itself to misunderstanding, though; some clarification might be in order.

Secondly, you're wrong to say that prepositions always have objects; consider "This chair was sat on" (one of the examples given in the article). On is a preposition, but it doesn't have an object; that it's a preposition is clear from the active version ("[Someone] sat on this chair", where "this chair" is the object), but that it doesn't have an object is clear from the fact that the sentence has only one noun phrase ("this chair"), and it's the subject of the verb.

Thirdly, you're wrong to say that "Where is it at?" is wrong; or at least, your argument is unsound, since it would also toss out "Where is she from?".

Fourthly and finally, while you are right that "up" is indeed a particle in the phrasal verb "put up", "with" is nonetheless an ordinary preposition, at least by traditional analysis; the supposedly-correct fronted version would be "This is a rule with which I will not put up." Even this sounds ridiculous, though; in this case, only the p-stranded version sounds sane.

--Ruakh_TALK 19:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Arguably, in this form, the sentence 'This chair was sat (up)on' is using a preposition only under one form of technical slicing of the sentence. Looking at it from a communication intent point of view, the sentence 'This chair was sat upon' is more akin to 'This newspaper was read.' The verb construct 'sat upon' or 'sat on' is being used in compound as an adjective, as the subject of 'was'. It might be more correct to use it in a hyphenated form ('This chair was sat-upon'), but this could also be an example of hypercorrection as such an approach has largely gone out of use.

In other words, yes, 'on' is a preposition, but in this usage 'sat on' is not.

Consider the extended sentence, 'This chair was sat upon by a fat lady.' Technically, in isolation, both 'upon' and 'by' are both prepositions. However, only the latter of the two, 'by', is actually a preposition in this sentence.

I believe that Mealzwax's argument is actually quite valid and that this article largely misrepresents English P-stranding. P-stranding happens when a sentence has a preposition tacked onto it without a subject, usually a pronoun that is assumed (and would be properly and correctly assumed in many other languages such as Spanish where other indicators in the sentence specifically allow it).

Sentences such as 'This cake has cherries in' and 'She has clothes on' (note the latter is very common in the vernacular) are P-stranding and are considered bad grammar.

Both the above sentences can be corrected by the addition of a pronoun: 'This cake has cherries on it.' and 'She has clothes on herself.' are both correct, though the latter sounds a bit strange because the pronoun is usually omitted.

'Where are you at' is not an example of a sentence that is at issue. It's a bit wordy and uses an unneccesary, gratuitous word ('at', in the same sense that 'You are at where' suffers the same stiltedness), but it's not P-stranding. It's just needless in the same sense as the famous song lyric, 'Do you know where you're going to?' (though the latter at least has a reason--to fit the metre of the song).

By the way, if you are making the argument that Mealzwax misinterpreted the first sentence and that a preposition not appearing with a subject means that the subject is present, just seperated by many other words and perhaps in an unexpected order, then don't just scold Mealzwax about the issue. Change the sentence so that this miscommunication doesn't occur.

Personally, I'm not changing it simply because I don't think that it means what you think it means and I believe that Mealzwax read the sentence correctly, and that the rest of the article is severely challenged.

75.28.41.130 22:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Preposition stranding in non-standard French

Is the example Qui-ce que tu as fait le gâteau pour? correct? I would have thought it should be Qui est-ce que tu as fait le gâteau pour?. Mooncow 17:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for sure (I only know French as it's spoken in France), but I believe the article is correct; see e.g. fr:Français Cadien de la Paroisse de Terrebonne#Pronoms interrogatifs. --Ruakh_TALK 19:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

A good reference, thank you, and it does suggest the article is correct. Mooncow 01:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Winston Churchill's quote

I believe it was Winston Churchill who so beautifully summed up how stupid the "no stranded prepositions" rule is:

Putting a preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which I will not put.

--Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.87.237 (talk o contribs) 00:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

---check your source. the common story is that someone else tried to correct his stranded preposition,to which he responded "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put!". 66.73.48.200 21:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)Fingal

There is an object

The lead sentence reads:

Preposition stranding, sometimes called P-stranding, is the syntactic construction in which a preposition appears without an object.

If this is supposed to refer to constructions such as "You don't know what you're talking about", it doesn't make sense: the object of "about" in that sentence is "what". It needs to be reworded.

--207.176.159.90 (talk) 23:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

some issues...

...in specific and in general.

Mealzwax proposed a while ago: "First, the dispute among English grammarians is not whether a preposition can occur without an object, but whether a preposition can end a clause and whether a preposition can be separated from its object. A preposition must have an object by definition."

Well, there really are two disputes, and they are related. Yes, whether a preposition can end a clause is a matter of (some) discussion, though most grammarians I know (see, for example, the recent Oxford and Cambridge grammars) really aren't so prescriptive as to outlaw such constructions. But Mealzwax is simply incorrect in positing that, by definition, a preposition must have an object. SOME grammarians, and almost all traditional grammarians, would subscribe to this--but plenty of modern grammarians (Huddleston and Pullum, for instance) do not believe in such a definition. And the consequences are clear: if a preposition does not by definition need an object, there can be no stranding. Simple! Of course, such a modification of 'preposition' has far-reaching consequences, esp. for the category of adverbs.

I think the article should reflect these two related matters--one a matter of definition, one a matter of either proper behavior in language or of proper adherence to grammatical rules. I want to tackle this in the near future in this article, and I'll be glad to hear your suggestions. Drmies (talk) 04:54, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Theoretical Bias?

Am I the only one who thinks that sentences like "In Wh-constructions, the object of the preposition is a Wh-word in deep structure but is fronted as a result of the Wh-movement" show a bias towards certain linguistic theories? Not all linguists agree about the existence of such "deep structures". -- Marc André Bélanger --Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.16.236.136 (talk) 14:46, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking exactly the same. Proponents of generative grammar seem to forget quite often it's a theory. fr:user:Leafcat --Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.93.129.164 (talk) 21:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Il faudra agir selon ("We'll have to act accordingly")

Is this translation correct? I don't speak French, but I know il is 3sg masc, suggesting that the correct translation is He'll have to act accordingly. I hesitate to fix it because of the possibility that il faudra might be idiomatic. --Unconventional (talk) 05:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The translation is acceptable (if not literal); no need to fix it. CapnPrep (talk) 11:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

"Il" means "he", but it is also used as a subject with some impersonal verbs like "falloir" there; it's equivalent to the "it" in "it is raining". The sentence says something like "it will be necessary to act accordingly", but translating it as "we'll have" is fine if there is actually a "we" in the context. FirefishII (talk) 05:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

is this...?

is this a dangling preposition? "Pokemon is good as." "He's funny as." you get me? IAmTheCoinMan (talk) 11:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

As what? It's not so much a dangling preposition as an incomplete sentence (and incomplete thought). --Nricardo (talk) 05:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Globalize

This article claims that P-stranding is common in the North Germanic languages. But there are no examples from Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, or Icelandic to back this up. --Simonsa (talk) 17:39, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Certain prepositional passives

Prepositions should be ended sentences with.

This matter should be taken care of.

The first sentence above seems syntactically odd, but is perfectly comprehensible. The second sentence above seems normal, even though it seems syntactically parallel to the first one. I've heard this explained by saying that "take care of" is a phrasal verb.

He slept in this bed.

This bed was slept in.

This is a prepositional passive that doesn't seem odd. A big difference between this and the first example above is that the verb is intransitive. Prepositional passives with intransitive verbs seem standard in English.

Should this article mention prepositional passives? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:29, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I see that we have no article on prepositional passives. This phenomenon came to my attention when I was in eighth grade and I read Dickens' Great Expectations. The escaped convict Abel Magwitch says "I've been done everything to." Michael Hardy (talk) 18:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

"Out of" a preposition?

In the example:

What₁ did you bring that book₂ that I₃ didn't want to be read to___₃ out of___₂ up for___₁?

how is "out of" a preposition? I'd say the preposition is "of", and "out" is an adverb of movement (used in a figurative sense). Consequently, the way to move all the stranded prepositions to the end of the sentence is

What₁ did you bring up that book₂ that I₃ didn't want to be read to___₃ from___₂ for___₁?

217.158.111.130 (talk) 12:15, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Prepositional Endings in English Usage Guides

It would be well worth a reference to Fowler on this, see Talk:Preposition and postposition#at the end of the sentenceGraham Fountain 15:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Graham.Fountain (talk o contribs)

Prepositions immediately following their object

The term "preposition stranding" properly requires a gap between the preposition and its object, so I have changed the text to "in which a preposition with an object occurs somewhere other than immediately adjacent to its object. This previosly read 'next', but was changed to 'prior'. Huddleston et al. in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language explain preposition stranding thus: "i.e. occur with a gap in post-head complement position" [my emphasis]. They also explain the postpositioning of prepositions at some length. This paragraph refers to Germanic languages, and in German some prepositions often immediately follow the noun they govern. This can also be said to apply in English to prepositions like notwithstanding.--Boson (talk) 07:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The example with three prepositions in a row makes no sense

The article gives this "example" of "three" stranded prepositions in a row:

"What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"

Excuse me, what? I am a native English speaker, and that sounds very wrong. The example is not cited, which is one problem. An additional problem is that it was said by a young child, allegedly. I have no problem believing that a young child said that - I would say that child has not fully learned English grammar yet. I am not being pedantic, I honestly cannot follow that sentence without the subscripts (which I have omitted above). Also, I count more than three prepositions, but the article tries to explain that some of them don't count for some reason.

In contrast, this sentence does make sense to me:

"What did you bring that book up for?"

Does that count as two in a row? "Up" and "for" are two prepositions, by my count. They are both stranded (I think): "for what" and "bring up". Does "bring up" not count, maybe because it is a phrasal verb? I am not a linguist. If "bring up" doesn't count, then I cannot come up with an example of more than one stranded preposition in a row. I can see that "for what" is [preposition] [noun] and "bring up" is [verb] [preposition], so maybe they are different. Fluoborate (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the examples given are not suitable. Similar examples are regarded as jocular, rather than encyclopedic. The statements and the examples have been flagged as needing a citation for verification for several months and the burden of verification is on the editor who wishes to restore the material. I will try to find an example of multiple prepositions (with references).--Boson (talk) 16:13, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I disagree: Under the premise that preposition stranding is allowed, the sentence is grammatical - it just sounds awkward. However, the classification of some of these words as prepositions is questionable.

• I didn't want you to read to me out of that book -> I didn't want to be read to out of that book -> it is the book I didn't want to be read to out of.
• You brought that book up -> You brought that book I didn't want to be read to out of up.
• Why did you do that? -> What did you do that for? -> What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?

However, as used in this sentence, only "to", "of" and "for" are prepositions:

• A preposition always has an object; "up" doesn't have one here - it is just an adverb denoting the direction in which the book was brought. If OTOH we had said, for example, "brought up the stairs", then it would be a preposition.
• "Out" doesn't have a direct object here - note "I didn't want to be read to out of that book" not "I didn't want to be read to out that book". Indeed, "out" occurs as a preposition only in informal constructions like "throw it out the window". In standard/formal English, you would always follow it with "of" in such a context.

-- Smjg (talk) 08:09, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

All too confusing

I was just looking at this assertion from a comment above:

A construction in which the preposition has no object is incontrovertibly wrong:

Where are you at?

Imagine a heist movie, with the usual walkie-talkie banter.

W: Where are you?  
T: I'm three minutes into the sequence.  
W: No, where are you at?  
T: The south tower. 
W: Oh, crap.  Keep your head down, one of the guards was just spotted taking up a position near by.  
T: What do you think he's up to?  Does he suspect?  
W: So far I've got no idea.  

That also pretty much summarizes how I feel about all the ____i? examples which aren't even clearly flagged as being examples of the adduced theory, or of a sentence that the adduced theory deprecates. — MaxEnt 00:38, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Why are Scandinavian languages unmentioned?

They're actually the closest to modern English out of all of them when it comes to preposition stranding, making them remarkably similar in syntax.

For example: English: What are you talking about? Norwegian: Hva snakker du om?

Not having these languages mentioned in this article is a grave omission, pls expand Xfing (talk) 06:39, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Multiple prepositions?

Presently (Dec. 2021) the article says:

There are verbal idioms in English that include more than one preposition, so it is possible to have more than one stranded preposition; one instance is the sentence

"She was a fine manager, one who was looked up to by them all."

In my humble opinion, "up" is not a preposition here. While in a different context it could be or at least look like one ("running up the hill") here it is simply an adverb specifying the (figurative) direction of the looking, just like "down" would be in "one who was looked down on by all."

-- Renardo la vulpo (talk) 14:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed.---Ehrenkater (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

A great big "Huh?"

This article on preposition stranding is like an adpositional game of Three-card Monte with a postposition as the money card. To the level heads with more free time than yours truly: Have a wholesale go at re-doing this article. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:31, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about. If you make your remarks extremely cryptic, it's unlikely to influence other people to change the article. AnonMoos (talk) 02:30, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

For the uninitiated, the entire article treats a postpositional particle as a stranded preposition when it's in fact not a preposition at all. A case of mix-matched terminology regarding the syntactical import of lexical items. My original post is cryptic only if you buy into the linguistic myth that a preposition is at work and that it's somehow stranded in the linguistic equivalent of a sleight of hand. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 05:21, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

If most European languages would say something equivalent to "This is the disease against which we are fighting", while in English you can say both that and also "This is the disease which we are fighting against", then it's a natural assumption that "against" in the second sentence is not radically different in nature from "against" in the first sentence. What evidence (and more importantly Reliable Sources) do you have for such a radical difference? AnonMoos (talk) 12:07, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Semantically, your examples are identical. Syntactically, they're different. Specifically, the first example contains against as an adjectival preposition (with which as a prepositional object) that characterizes "disease" while in the second example, against isn't pre-positioning anything; it's a postpositional particle that adverbially characterizes "fighting." I concede how in the English-speaking world, linguistic terminology hasn't yet evolved to distinguish what looks, smells, and spells like a preposition from the lexical item that "against" constitutes in your second example, but other languages have done so for years. Do a Google Scholar search on postpositional particle to see for yourself. This article unfortunately treats preposition stranding as if it were a salient grammatical construct. I chuckle at how this article attempts to shoehorn a 17th century concept re P-stranding, hanging, dangling (etc.) to our 21st century language usages.

The archaic thrust of this article is a bit analogous to the relic that User:Doric Loon recently remedied in the split infinitive article. One big difference: the terminology used there was (essentially) modern from the start. Here, the terminology (with the exception of sluicing, which is analyzed correctly in its modern sense but tangential to the article's theme) sounds as though John Dryden is lecturing to grammar school kids who don't know dependency grammar from phrase structure grammar. I've got tons of remedies for this article's mess, but I'm unwilling to invest the time or to divest the stake in my own intellectual property since I've not yet published my own OR on the topic. Good luck to editors who might be more enterprising here in creating a postpositional particle page. I'll leave it to them to figure out and explain the nexus between a postpositional particle and the particle that complements a verb in an English phrasal verb. Hint: follow the trail of breadcrumbs that linguists in other languages have left behind.

Mea culpa to anyone who hits AnonMoos and me with a WP:NOTAFORUM hashtag, but this longwinded reply is intended to ultimately benefit (sorry for the split infinitive) ultimately intended to benefit this article's theme, definitions, and analysis that others might be interested in in which others might be interested. Cheers to all. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 14:59, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Since Kent Dominic kindly mentioned me here, the main point I was making on the split infinitive page is that in some sections we are talking about the construction and how it works in English, including its development from Old English, and then we are writing about linguistics and should be using the terminology most current in modern linguistics. In other sections we may be talking about the 19th-century debate, and any hangover it had into the 20th century, and there modern linguistic terminology would be anachronistic and we should use whatever grammatical categories were current at the time the debate was taking place. I have not really delved into p-stranding, so I don't want to comment on what modern linguistics makes of it, but my hunch would say that this was originally a preposition that was moved into a position which can fairly be described as stranded, but that it then operated in a new way, so it probably should be reanalyzed as something other than a preposition. So I would suspect "preposition stranding" is the vocabulary of the 19th-century rather than the 21st. --Doric Loon (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

A much simpler version of what I said. GMTA. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:09, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Kent_Dominic -- Some prepositions certainly appear as post-verbal particles ("Don't give up!", "The house burned down" etc etc), but what evidence or Reliable Source is there that "against" ever does so? (There needs to be evidence from a non-"preposition stranding" context, or the argument will be purely circular.) AnonMoos (talk) 07:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Your two recent examples entail "up" and "down" as canonical adverbs. See Webster or Oxford and do the math for yourself, then check the Reliable Source given for this article's lead sentence to better understand why it's more nonsensical than comically ipse dixit. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 11:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

"Give up" and "burn down" are phrasal verbs. You can analyze "up" and "down" as adverbs or as particles, or just say they are part of the verb. Historically, they are actually Germanic separable prefixes which often have the same form as related prepositions. But at any rate, this is a completely separate construction from p-stranding. (Check out http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361lamont.html.) --Doric Loon (talk) 17:15, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Well said. Disclaimer: I termed "up" and "down" as adverbs solely because that's how major dictionaries tag them in instances where they parse a phrasal verb. I've not yet come across any dictionary that identifies adverbial particles. Indeed, only recently has Webster begun to tag phrasal verbs as such rather than as "idioms." Unfortunately, when their phrasal verbs are parsed and linked to the appropriate headwords, some of them still link solely to prepositions. So, I totally understand why legions of linguistic wannabes confuse phrasal verbs (or collocated cognates) like firm up the plans versus verb phrases like firm the plans up versus so-called P-stranding that are actually postpositional particles like that's where it's.

ESL instruction still by and large fails to distinguish between phrasal verbs and verb phrases. The terminological snafu gets prickly only when the brightest students spot the conflation. I truly squirm when an ESL instructor casually tosses out a colloquialism like, "Here's something you can go by," but can't understand how it's totally ambiguous for someone who learned the SOP with the prepositional collocation (i.e., go by the post office) but can't work out alternative meaning of "by" as an adverbial particle. A standard dictionary is of no help whatsoever. E.g., Webster defines "by" as tagged via a preposition, noun, adjective, and interjection (with the alternate spelling as "bye"); "go by" is defined solely as a verb: "pass by ... to move in a path so as to approach and continue beyond something : move past." So, when the poor ESL student hears, "Here's something you can go by," and the uninformed instructor says "by" is an example of P-stranding otherwise rendered as "here is something by which you can go," the hapless student thinks it means "Here is something by which you can pass and continue beyond. Who's to blame the student when this article doles out similar inanity in no small portions? Yikes! --Kent Dominic·(talk) 19:19, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Kent_Dominic -- You're very good at issuing dogmatic assertions and unsupported denunciations, but you're rather poor at adducing concrete evidence and/or reliable sources, and this is frankly getting a little tiresome by now. You also need to learn not to throw a tantrum when someone uses different linguistic terminology than you, or uses a different linguistic analysis. AnonMoos (talk) 17:45, 10 January 2022 (UTC)m

Kent_Dominic -- It's time for you to bring forward some evidence or examples or Reliable Sources to support your position, or else stop wasting everybody else's time. AnonMoos (talk) 18:38, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Kent_Dominic -- The extreme contrast between your rapidity in adding fact-free or tangential tirades to this page and your dilatory sluggishness in bringing any relevant evidence or examples or Reliable Sources to bear is distinctly unimpressive. Edit warring on this page cannot take the place of the needed evidence or examples or Reliable Sources. AnonMoos (talk) 01:05, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

The debate about P-Stranding

I am a little unhappy with the section on the debate, which is quite sloppily written. But for the moment I don't want to start editing here, so I'll just give you my unsolicited peer-review, so to speak. The first sentence is totally inane - obviously the construction was in use before it was objected to. Besides, the history of the construction does not belong in the same section as the history of the debate. If you wish to write about the development of a prescriptive rule, and reactions against that, you need to attempt a serious historical overview, citing who said what and when. You might take split infinitive as a model, though it is possibly too long.

The information about Lowth is wrong: he specifically objected to "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language" (A Short Introduction to English Grammar, p. 107), as far as I can see he never used deference to Latin as an argument for any of his judgments about English, and besides, he did not proscribe P-stranding: he did say it could be clumsy and might not always be best style, but he used it himself on the same page.

The paragraph on French is terrible. Explaining about tu and vous is really treating the readers as though they are stupid. We all understand that there are situations where more formal or more informal language is appropriate, and all you need to say is that p-stranding in French is informal. Besides, I don't see any evidence here that there is any controversy in French anyway. The sentence "Linguistics has a relation to culture." is another inane talking-down sentence - please avoid that tone.--Doric Loon (talk) 16:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Meaning of the word "postposition"

The normal meaning of the word "postposition" is something which normally comes IMMEDIATELY after what it modifies (as in Hindi, Japanese, etc). If the object of a preposition is moved out of its original clause to a previous position in the sentence ("You are looking at what?" -> "What are you looking at?", the preposition does not somehow become a postposition. That's simply not how the word is generally used by linguists. AnonMoos (talk) 16:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

I can't agree there's a "normal meaning" of what a postposition is. For some perspective, the meaning of a preposition is fairly well settled. A postposition, by most definitions, is what this article attempts to describe. Also, prepositive typically refers to a lexical item that characterizes a subsequent referent, e.g., "Actually, I disagree" (wherein "actually" is a prepositive adverb that characterizes a subsequent clause) or "I actually disagree" (wherein "actually" is a prepositive adverb that characterizes a subsequent verb). By contrast, postpositive typically refers to a lexical item that characterizes an antecedent referent, e.g., "I disagree, actually" (wherein "actually" characterizes an antecedent clause).

In English, normal syntax involves prepositive characterizations for the nominal case (e.g., "A good boy" or "Come into the house." Yet, lots of syntax is marked with postpositive characterizations, e.g., "Tell me something new or "What are you talking about?" The article assumes that "about" corresponds to "what" as a prepositional object via P-stranding in the "About what are you talking? shuffling of lexical items under a Three-card Monte dependency grammar analysis. I fundamentally disagree with that approach, which is semantically fine but syntactically twisted. Instead, I say "about" is neither a preposition nor syntactically related to "what;" it's a postpositive particle related to "talking." Juxtaposing different examples makes my point clear...

In the case of "I ran into the city," ran" is intransitive; in "I ran two laps," ran is transitive; in "I ran into trouble, ran into is a transitive phrasal verb (i.e., semantically, "I ran into trouble" doesn't make sense). Now look at all of these permutations:

• Q: What did you run into? (I.e., "into" as a preposition under so-called P-stranding but otherwise a postposition. Either way, it's a postpositive lexical item.) A₁: I ran into the city.
• Q: What did you run into? (I.e., "into" as a postpositive particle that complements "run" in the "run into" transitive phrasal verb under a subject-verb inversion.) A₂: I ran into trouble.
• Q: What did they look up? (I.e., "up" under so-called P-stranding.) A₁: They looked up the periscope.
• Q: What did they look up? (I.e., "up" as a postpositive particle that complements "look" in the "look up" transitive phrasal verb.) A₂: They looked up the definition.

Now, back to the "talk about" example: Webster and Collins treat "talk about" as a phrasal verb that equates to "discuss." So, it's "She talked about the weather," not "She talked about the weather." Consequently, in "What are you talking about," "about" has a syntactical nexus to "talking," not "what" such that you are talking about what, not talking about what, according to Webster and Collins. The list goes on:

• How much did they put up? They put up $10,000. ("Up how much did they put?" is duckspeak.)
• Who(m) did you write off? ("Off whom did you write?" is ridiculous.) I didn't write off anyone.
• When did you take it back? (In concept, "When did you take back it" is syntactically sound but EVERY grammarian has a rule about separable versus inseparable phrasal verbs depending on whether a noun or pronoun is involved; applying those rules requires rote memory re 1000s of such verbs rather than simply thinking about in an axiomatic way that ignores P-stranding altogether.) I took it back this morning. (Why is "I took back it" grammatically taboo while "I took back these" acceptable? No one has a rational answer.)

• Bonus example: You can roll out the barrel only if you're already in the barrel. Otherwise, you roll out the barrel. Q: What did you roll out? (I.e., "Out what did you roll?" is a syntactically sound articulation that strains semantic credulity.) A: I rolled out the barrel. (LMAO.)

The P-stranding article solely focuses on semantic parallels without describing the syntactic discrepancies. Is this me throwing a tantrum? Nope. Do I fault Wikipedia editors for the dearth of linguistic publications on this matter? Nope. Do I cringe when someone uses different linguistic terminology than I do? Hardly, yet I sometime scoff involuntarily, to use a postpositive adverb. Will I use such silly-assed terminology (and faulty conceptual analysis) as P-stranding on my own? In the words of George H. W. Bush, "Nah ga, nah ga, not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent." --Kent Dominic·(talk) 01:57, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

It's nice that you're now actually bringing up some example sentences (after conspicuously refusing to produce any concrete evidence at all in previous subsections of this talk page), but my main point stands.

First, post-verbal particles (or whatever you want to call them) are a different part of speech from prepositions. (Post-verbal particles do not have objects of their own -- only the whole combination of verb+particle can optionally have an object -- while prepositions almost always have their own objects.) Many prepositions can also be post-verbal particles (or perhaps it should be said more accurately that many preposition words are homophonous in sound and spelling with corresponding post-verbal particle words), but many other prepositions cannot be used as post-verbal particles. So prepositions and post-verbal particles should be discussed distinctly. Confusing the two at the beginning makes insightful analysis impossible. It could be true that in a few particular cases there are ambiguities between a verb+particle analysis and a stranded-preposition analysis, but in many other cases there is no ambiguity at all, and only one analysis can apply. Blurry boundaries in a few borderline cases do not destroy all distinctions in grammar.

Unfortunately, "postposition" does have a standard meaning in linguistics: it refers to something which "follows its complement to form a postpositional phrase" (according to the wording on the Wikipedia article). Obviously, a complement (or object) and postposition widely separated in a sentence cannot form an ordinary "phrase". When a preposition (in English) or postposition (hypothetically in other languages) is separated from its object, this is due to syntactic displacement. Syntactic displacement cannot change a word which is a preposition in all other non-displaced usages to suddenly become a postposition. This idea would seem quite ridiculous to most professional linguists. If "at" in "What are you looking at?" is a postposition, then what is its object?? It sure as heck ain't "looking"!

An even more basic point, is that if all this is your own personal work, then it's the dreaded "original research". Unfortunately, you seem to use your own semi-idiosyncratic terminology, and do not always understand the conclusions of mainstream linguistics as well as you seem to think you do, so that by Wikipedia principles, you are not the best person to try to rewrite this article -- unless, of course, you can find reliable sources in support of your position. AnonMoos (talk) 02:47, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with AnonMoos that a postpostion is an adposition that follows the noun, like German den Fluss entlang (along the river), which is nevertheless in a close syntactic unit with its noun. In principle, I would have no difficulty with extending that to include sentence-terminal use, if that is what Kent Dominic is suggesting, but for Wikipedia purposes, the most important question is what linguists are actually doing, and outside of these talk-page discussions I myself haven't seen it. Apart from that, there are downsides to terminology that is unfamiliar. Even in the case of entlang, which indubitably is a postposition, the German textbooks call it "a preposition that comes after the noun" because it would be silly to burden schoolkids and language learners with an over-scrupulous definition of pre-position. So for myself, I'm sticking with saying the at in What are you looking at? is a preposition, and that it has been displaced (or maybe that the wh- pronoun that logically follows it has been displaced). I can live with any of the three terms found in the literature (prepositon stranding, sentence-terminal preposition, preposition at the end), with a slight preference for terminal preposition. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:54, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Linguists would say that "what" is displaced from its ordinary sysyntactic position as the object of the preposition in order to form a question (see article Wh-movement, and compare the incredulous question "You're looking at what?, with emphasis on unmoved "what", which is a perfectly good English sentence). Of course, compared with the construction found in most other European languages, equivalent to "At what are you looking?", then it's "at" which seems out of place... AnonMoos (talk) 17:42, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Doric Loon: As discussed on your talk page, I'm relieved to know you haven't seen my given analyses elsewhere. If so, my originality is skunked. I agree that the most important question is what linguists are actually doing if anyone decides to edit the article accordingly. Consequently, in contrast to AnonMoos's impertinent kvetching, I haven't proposed interpolating unsourced items into the article even though it should be fairly obvious how published linguists are putting the semantic cart before the syntactic horse by way of faulty dependency grammar theories and naïve transpositions re P-stranding. I credit you for giving these matters more thought than what's been demonstrated by published linguists in the English-speaking world. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 18:21, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

__________

We all agree that a postposition is an adposition that follows the noun. Yet AnonMoos wrote that a postposition "normally comes IMMEDIATELY after what it modifies." Regardless of whether that's true in other languages, let's apply an analogous statement to prepositions so that a prepposition "normally comes IMMEDIATELY before what it modifies. Doing so highlights the capricious dynamic of the P-Stranding analysis given to examples like, "What are you talking about?" Assuming "about" relates distally to "what" rather than proximally to "talking," then "about" can be neither a postposition nor a preposition under the forgoing analysis. (In the post that initially got AnonMoos's attention, I used postposition merely to pique interest. My posts thereafter contained references to postpositional particle implying a nexus to an antecedent verb, NOT to an antecedent object. In my view, "What are you talking about" implies "what" as the transitive object of "talk about" in a subject-verb inversion rather than as a prepositional object of a stranded preposition.)

We all agree there are downsides to terminology that is unfamiliar. Perhaps we all agree there are pragmatic upsides to using familiar terminology. E.g., if we assume pragmatics in accepting, as AnonMoos pointed out, that a postposition refers to something which "follows its complement to form a postpositional phrase," then "What are you talking about implies a postposition. Doric Loon says such terminology doesn't comport inter-linguistically per published items on the topic, and I agree. AnonMoos says a term like postpositional particle is OR - more egregiously so than applying the concept of a postposition to a "What are you talking about" construction. Well, AnonMoos, please listen up once and for all...

• I've apologized more than once in these threads for skirting the WP:NOTAFORUM guidelines despite how the crux of my arguments relate to how the article needs work.
• Each lexical item that turns up in red text highlights an instance of OR, which is unnecessary to repetitively mention.
• I have not and don't intend to interpolate OR into the article. Discussing OR for the sake of fleshing out citable sources is what talk page discussions help to promote, and Doric Loon has done a creditable job of doing precisely that.
• Taking a Socratic approach to linguistics, incl. grammar, semantics, lexicology and taxonomy, is part of my modus operandi. AGAIN, shame on me for skirting the WP:NOTAFORUM guidelines, but so far it's resulted in Doric Loon's emendment of the article with his sentence-terminal preposition and preposition at the end edits, which I subsequently edited somewhat capriciously (in part due to an intervening Wikipedia maintenance snafu), re-edited on an intermediate basis, and am still waiting for Doric Loon to tweak.
• Re "you seem to use your own semi-idiosyncratic terminology," you need only look at the red text in these threads to evince the truth in that. If, by chance, you were wrong, I'd be devastated since I claim the definitions of those terms (of course, not the terms themselves) as my own semi-idiosyncratic, yet-unpublished intellectual property.
• Re your "you ... do not always understand the conclusions of mainstream linguistics as well as you seem to think you do" comment, it's wholly unflattering and 100% ad hominem. If it's accurate, please restrict further comment to elucidation of what mainstream linguistics purport after taking a critical eye to any inconsistencies. If the comment is inaccurate, as you may well conclude after reading the pertinent walls of text on Doric Loon's talk page, I'll accept your forthcoming apology.
• Your comment that, "Obviously, a complement (or object) and postposition widely separated in a sentence cannot form an ordinary phrase" is an un-premised, unattested, axiomatic pronouncement. Indeed, I fully agree with the comment. Now we have to ask ourselves this: If we apply the same principle to a preposition, can we reasonably say that "about," which is widely separated/stranded from "what," is a preposition in the "What are you talking about?" examples? I'm clearly in the minuscule minority of commentators who object to that traditional linguistic conclusion under a dependency grammar analysis. Now, your very own phrase structure analysis is implying a similar rejection. You can't have it both ways.

In my Socratic way of rhetoric, consider the ordinary meanings post- and pre-. Now ask yourself whether a pre- whatchamacallit can rationally occur in the position at the end of a sentence, i.e., as a sentence-terminal preposition or as a preposition at the end. As I mentioned above, this is an a priori question, not a matter of glossing the academic publications. Doric Loon says, essentially, "Point well taken, but it might not be pragmatic to buck the linguistic status quo. Historically, people are heavily invested in terminology that has its shortcomings." Touché. To rephrase it in with my cryptic sense of humor: This article on preposition stranding is like an adpositional game of Three-card Monte with a postposition as the money card. Ignore the semantic differences between "roll out the barrel" and "roll out the barrel" and "roll the barrel out" at your own peril.

AnonMoos, a dynamic you've failed to address, despite my expounding it repeatedly both here and on Doric Loon's talk page, is the linguistic blurring of concepts regarding particles that function adverbially. Shame on you if you don't know what that concept involves; shame on me if you've heard the terms prepositive adverbial particle (like the "to" in a to-infinitive phrase, which is traditionally known as a mere to-infinitive rather than as a to-infinitive phrase) or postpositive adverbial particle (e.g., "Talk out the problem" wherein "out" is not to be construed prepositionally as "Talk out the problem, which is semantically nonsensical and syntactically distinct from a phrase structure POV). ...

Under a P-stranding analysis via dependency grammar, "Talk the problem out" renders an unintelligible meaning assuming a phrasal nexus between "out" and "the problem; under my own semi-idiosyncratic terminology, "Talk the problem out is readily comprehensible with "out" as a postpositive adverbial particle relating to "talk". (*Ahem* ... No need to mention separable versus separable phrasal verbs here. I'm merely pointing out how the linguistic status quo consistently offers naïve examples that are prefabbed for conclusory results that ignore the real-life manners of phrasal construction and interpretation. For some semi-idiosyncratic analysis rather than semi-idiosyncratic terminology, I deem "Talk out the problem" as entailing a phrasal verb and "Talk the problem out" as entailing a verb phrase albeit with "out" as a postpositive adverbial particle. I'll LMAO if someone prefers to call it a stranded adverbial particle!)

Is my analysis gibberish? I think not. Is it citable? I hope not, otherwise my original work lacks the originality that I claim. As original work, is my terminology ripe for Wikipedia? Definitely not: there are no new lexemes involved, only original SOP re extant lexemes as applied in critical analyses. Are those critical analyses ripe for this article: Yes, if you've been following the play-by-play in these threads, have some knowledge of the modern linguistic terminology from other languages, and can do a creditable transliteration. Good luck with that. Is the analysis ripe for the talk page? So far, no one has complained a la WP:NOTAFORUM, but I wouldn't vociferously deny such an accusation.

Do I have further gripes about how this article ignores what zeugma and syllepsis imply re how a word like "into" can be variously construed as having a "What did you run into?" versus a "What did you run into?" interpretation? AnonMoos, the fact that I agree with your ad hominem comment that "you are not the best person to try to rewrite this article" make it no less ad hominem. It's also needless to be said not because Wikipedia policy warns against such statements but because I've already said:

• "To the level heads with more free time than yours truly: Have a wholesale go at re-doing this article."
• "Good luck to editors who might be more enterprising here in creating a postpositional particle page." (Fully tongue0in-cheek.)
• "Hint: follow the trail of breadcrumbs that linguists in other languages have left behind." (Emphasis added to highlight that there's a dearth of English-language sources on point.)

Have I lost any sleep over any of this? Um, no. Do I favor burdening schoolchildren with the phalanx of terminology in this thread? Not in the least. However, if an outlier stumbles here and reads any of the terms in this thread, I bet they'll have a better idea of how the article's premises are not only sorely lacking but also how its examples evince inconsistencies re adjacent linguistic concepts. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kent Dominic: I may have said this to you (several times) on other pages, but it bears saying again: try not to take things quite so personally. And if I may give you another piece of friendly advice, try not to write quite so much. Normally I read a comment three times before I post a reply to it, but with you I often just skim once, and I know I may not do justice to you, but I don't have the time. As I've said before, you have really interesting things to say, and I value your input. Let's all try not to be confrontational and ad hominem.

I take issue with one of your examples: you contrast run [into the city] with [run into] trouble, suggesting if I understand you correctly that into is a preposition in the former and an adverb in the latter. I actually think that syntactically they are exactly parallel. In I ran into trouble, the running is obviously metaphorical, but in my mind's eye I do see somebody literally running to a place of trouble. If this were the adverbial construction, you would have the option of putting into after the noun (*I ran trouble into). A better example might be: He ran [up the street] versus He [ran up] a large bill, the latter with the alternative He [ran] a large bill [up]. My big gripe about the phrasal verbs page is that these two constructions are muddled there - I think phrasal verbs should only be the latter. Preposition stranding should only concern the former - despite the unhelpful views of Gibbon that I added to the debate history section.--Doric Loon (talk) 18:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Doric Loon: I won't quarrel about any of my offhanded examples that might be a bit defective. I don't deny that my posts might be are too long and windbaggy. And I don't take refutations personally (but thanks for the empathy). Moreover, due to my Vulcan way of dismissing stuff that's illogical, I don't let ad hominem stuff get to me. Besides all that, I'm happy to see your comments on the nexus between the problems in this article and the ones re phrasal verbs. Finally, on a separate and most pertinent note, are you happy with my days-old but most recent edit to the lead? I think it needs additional work. Please, do something more with it. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 19:47, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

According to official Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia does not want those editing its articles to be original (WP:OR). In a Wikipedia dispute-resolution procedure or Admin noticeboard complaint, the person admitting to being "original" is almost guaranteed to lose. The purpose of this page is to discuss improving the "Preposition stranding" article, so any comments added for other (incompatible) purposes are simply wasting other people's time. AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Claim of "Ungrammatical" English example variants?

The section on Prepositional Stranding under Regular Wh-movement, in the English examples, states that the sentence becomes ungrammatical when the preposition is moved along with the wh-word. This does not seem at all correct to me, and the examples provided both sound correct (although the second one has a very cumbersome tone to it; there are no problems at all with the first example, however).

This claim is made without a source, but a source is provided for other parts of the section. In fact, that source directly contradicts the claim, using the supposedly "incorrect" example in question: See example 7 on page 943 and the preceding paragraph about both constructions being used interchangeably. 158.174.76.249 (talk) 03:36, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

If you're referring to "From which town did you come? About what are you talking?", these sentences sound rather stylistically awkward as basic neutral modern English sentences (though similar sentences may have been fine in earlier eras of English). At least the first sentence can be "saved" by intonation, either by placing a rising tone emphasis on "which" to form an incredulous question, or having two intonational accents in the sentence, one on the verb and one on the prepositional phrase, to form a question seeking clarification (as opposed to a basic neutral question seeking information with only one intonational accent on the verb).

Of course, moving the preposition is often OK in other contexts, especially when the wh-word forms a relative clause: "To what do you attribute your success?", "The lifestyle to which she has become accustomed" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 12:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree that the first one sounds stylistically problematic at all. Of course, this might vary depending on the speaker (would be interesting to see some research that asks English speakers from varous parts of the world how they perceive it). However, the point remains that claiming they are ungrammatical, like this page does, without any source to back it up is original research. The author did cite the source they got the examples from, but directly contradict what the source is saying about them. This should be removed. 176.10.159.214 (talk) 13:47, 20 September 2022 (UTC)