Faldage - 01 April 2008 05:11 PM

Just because he wrote the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language doesn’t mean he’s right about what a preposition is.

I think a more useful way to approach this is that he uses a different definition of “preposition” than do you.  The discussion which follows this approach is regarding what definition is most useful. 

This is similar to the future tense discussion, which is really about the definition of “tense”.  I am persuaded that the traditional definition applied to English grammar is a hopeless mess, conflating syntax and semantics is generally being poorly thought out.  I think an argument can be made for abandoning the word “tense”, as it causes confusion, but that is a slightly different matter.

I haven’t studied the preposition issue enough to have an opinion.  In the meantime, I just keep in mind that different people use the word “preposition” differently, and try to keep straight who is using which.

Just in case Mr Pullum sends a squad of hit-linguists down from Edinburgh to split my infinitives from pate to patella and dangle my participles out of a 10th-storey window, I wasn’t really suggesting he’s a micturation-remover, I think he has a very clever way of getting people to question their unthinking assumptions about the language they speak, by making statements that are apparently wind-ups but actually contain serious points for discussion.

I suspect that the issue is definitional.

Absolutely.  And I have no problem (and I don’t imagine Geoff has a problem) with people disagreeing about which definitions are most useful; what bothers me is people rejecting anything that conflicts with what they were taught in grade school because, dammit, what they were taught is Truth!  It’s taken a long time to see that our traditional categories for analyzing English are inherited from a time when people knew very little about language, and I suspect it’s going to take a fair amount more time for linguists to come to an informed agreement about a better way to do it, and of course an even longer time to persuade the public at large.

In my case I see no good reason to use the term preposition to refer to what some call the particle of a phrasal verb.  Granted many if not all of them are identical in form to prepositions, but to call them that just muddies the definition of prepostion. 
They’re performing a completly different function.  It would be as though we insisted on calling muddy an adjective in my second sentence.

"Absolutely.  And I have no problem (and I don’t imagine Geoff has a problem) with people disagreeing about which definitions are most useful; what bothers me is people rejecting anything that conflicts with what they were taught in grade school because, dammit, what they were taught is Truth!”

Well I’m sure we don’t get those people in here…

Luckily, they no longer teach grammar at school in my country, so adults approach the topic with refreshing ignorance.

Edit:
“In my case I see no good reason to use the term preposition to refer to what some call the particle of a phrasal verb. “

There are cases where it is a bit grey.
I mean when I sleep with a clean conscience, it’s a preposition.
When I sleep with my wife, if I’m lucky it’s the back-end of a phrasal verb.
What about when I sleep with a teddy bear? {note, I’m not a plushee}

Well I’m sure we don’t get those people in here…

Oh, yes, we do.  And until “the experts” agree on another grammatical system, let alone a more logical one and one that I understand, what I was taught in school is what I will use.

OP Tipping - 02 April 2008 06:37 PM

There are cases where it is a bit grey.
I mean when I sleep with a clean conscience, it’s a preposition.
When I sleep with my wife, if I’m lucky it’s the back-end of a phrasal verb.
What about when I sleep with a teddy bear? {note, I’m not a plushee}

One test is whether you can move the word to the end of the sentence and still come up with something that a native speaker will recognize as grammatical.

1) Jack and Jill ran up a big hill.
2) *Jack and Jill ran a big hill up.
3) Jack and Jill ran up a big bill.
4) Jack and Jill ran a big bill up.

Clearly 1, 3, and 4 are grammatical but 2 is not.  ‘Up’ in 1 and 2 is a preposition; ‘up’ in 3 and 4 is not.

Another test is whether the base meaning of the verb has changed significantly.

A) I ran into the stadium.
B) I ran into an old friend.

In A) there was actual running involved.  This is not necessarily the case with B).  But note:

C) *I ran an old friend into.

C) is clearly not grammatical.

Note: By grammatical I mean that it is recognized by a native speaker as being a well-formed sentence, not that there are necessarily any codified rules regarding the construction in question.  We learn pretty much all we need about English grammar by the age of 4 or 5 and we did it all on our own without any formal training.

Rrrright, but

“This is the friend I ran into.”
“He’s not the kind of bloke I’d like to run into.”

would be acceptable.

Sentences ending with bona fide prepositions are normally of that general type, I’d reckon.

In both those examples the particle is smack up against the back end of the verb.  That the verb as a whole ends the sentence is purely coincidental.

Yes.

Those are the forms I’d choose.

Are we agreeing or disagreeing?  Are you saying you’d say, “This is the friend I ran into,” rather than “I ran into an old friend (this morning”?  They would be used in two entirely different situations.  My point here is that in the phrase run into, meaning “meet unexpectedly”, the into is bound tightly to the verb.  The up in the phrase run up, meaning, roughly, “amass”, isn’t.

I’m pretty sure we are agreeing.