Talk:Preposition stranding

message: :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-Interessierterde (talk (de)) 01:25, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @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)
thread_title: 2023

message: 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)
thread_title:  Minor Edit 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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. --RuakhTALK 19:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A good reference, thank you, and it does suggest the article is correct. Mooncow 01:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preposition stranding in non-standard French 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Winston Churchill's quote 

message: 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)
thread_title:  There is an object 

message: ...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)
thread_title:  some issues... 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Theoretical Bias? 

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

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

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Globalize 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Certain prepositional passives 

message: 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)
thread_title: "Out of" a preposition?

message: 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)
thread_title:  Prepositional Endings in English Usage Guides 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Prepositions immediately following their object 

message: 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)
thread_title: All too confusing

message: 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)
thread_title:  Why are Scandinavian languages unmentioned? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Multiple prepositions? 

message: 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)
replies: text: Yep. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:10, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The debate about P-Stranding