English/Lit Majors

“I am doing a "seminar" in my Linguistics class. It's all about prepositions... Pre-positions vs. Post-positions. Ya know, that arbitrary rule that says you can't end a sentence with a preposition.

Can you guys give me some good ideas of sentences that actually sound more fluid with preps at the end? Any old sentence will do. A famous quote or two wouldn't kill me either.

Thanks!”

“Would you like fries with that?”

“Why don't you come on over?

He's just trying it out.

It's somewhere in between.

You're turning me on.

I think Enron is going under.”

“Tara? Check your email.”

“I guess mine wasn't a preposition. Sorry.”

“no, but it still made me laugh!”

“Hey baby, need a date?

Oh wait, you said preposition, not proposition.

My bad.”

“tarabull: This should help.

From H.W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd Ed. 1965, Oxford University Press (revised by Sir Ernest Gowers) reprinted 1985, pp. 473-475:

Beginning of the entry for "preposition at end" on pp. 473

"It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be kept true to their name and placed before the word they govern in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late ('They are the fittest timber to make great politics of' said Bacon; and 'What are you hitting me for?' says the modern schoolboy)."

He goes on to cite Ruskin's use of the pattern in the later footnotes to the text of Seven Lamps: 'Any more wasted words...I never heard of.' and 'Men whose occupation for the next fifty year would be the knocking down every beautiful building they could lay their hands on.'

After discussing Dryden's reliance on the patterns of Latin in forming and insisting on the strict pattern of "pre-" for English, the citation continues on p. 474:

'The fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by English in putting its prepositions late and omitting its relatives is an important element in the flexibility of the language. The power of saying [italics] A state of dejection such as they are absolute strangers to [end italics] (Cowpers) instead of [italics] A state of dejection of an intensity to which they are absolute strangers, [end italics] or [italics] People worth talking to [end italics] instead of [italics] People with whom it is worth while to talk, [end italics] is not one to be lightly surrendered. ... Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards. The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained; in respect of elegance or inelegance, every example must be judged not by any arbitrary rule, but on its own merits, according to the impression it makes on the feeling of educated English readers.'

Numerous quotes from famous writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson, Milton, Burton, Pepys, etc., are used to complete the citation. If you would like me to fax a copy of the pages, email me a fax number at:

iitonen@netscape.net

and I'll forward it to you.”

“oops, "next fifty years"

sorry about the italics indications, but I don't know how to put them in postings and I wanted you to know where the text applies them.”

“Thanks Pekka... I hope you were able to cut/paste. That would be a lot of typing.

I have Fowler's book. I also have a book called The Careful Writer (Bernstein) and one called Usage and Abusage (Partridge). I've also referenced the Oxford Dictionary of Quotes. But, unfortunately, you can't search quotations by where the preposition is placed...”

“So this hillbilly is wandering around Harvard, lost, and he runs into a professor. And he asks the professor, "where's the library at?"

And the professor says, sternly, "at Harvard we do not end a sentence with a preposition."

And the hillbilly says "okay then, where's the library at...A$$HOLE?"

It's an old one, but it's in the public domain so you can use it in your seminar without getting nailed for plagiarism.”

“A New York Times writer used something simliar in an article called My Mistakes Make ESPN...

"Sometimes you have to throw a player out. I remember one exchange a few years back when I caled a pitch on Lou Piniella. He said, 'Where's that pitch at.' I said, 'Lou, it's gramatically incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition.' Piniella said, 'I should have said, 'Where's that pitch at, a$$hole.'"

I guess is is in the public domain!!”

“Tehipite stole my damn joke! Word-for-word!

(and it's not old; it's... well-seasoned)”

“The thing to remember when someone pulls that "grammatically correct" B.S. on you is to ask their source. Fowler is pretty clear: it's a superstition and not a rule.”

“Ask Ice Tea”

“A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.”

“Fowler provides a good argument against the prescriptivists, and Ice Tea provides a good argument against the descriptivists. ;-)

I assume you're going to use Churchill's quote: "That is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."”

“In Ebonics it is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a prepostion, for example, "Where he be at?"”

“What were they thinking of?”

“Is this string over?”

“tehipite. yes, i'll be using churchill's quote. according to oxford, it goes like this:

"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put"”

“i had heard Churchill quote as "a preposition is a stupid thing to end a sentence with".”

“To give your seminar a TT flavor:

There is this excellent campsite with a smooth, flat spot we can put our tents on.

I brought a titanium pot for us to boil our water in.

Hey, there is the food bag the bear was biting into.

It was your dang tarp guyline I tripped over.

Well, people know how to pee in the dark where I come from.”

“Knowing how to pee in the dark is a good thing.

Hhehehehe....8)”

“I hope this is over with.”

“8)”

“Ayn Rand wanted to have some TTers over. Always a good hostess, she needed to get an anodized pot to put her lime green jello in. To find such a pot, she called around. But there was no lighweight cookware dealer near by. However, an internet search of gear sites found an ultralite tub that she got a "killer deal" on.”

“Pekka you are too funny.

That made me laugh.

Thank you.

8)”

“Let me know when we get to philosophy majors.”

“Another version of the Pinella story is:

A girl from the South and a girl from the North were seated side by side on a plane. The girl from the South, being friendly
and all, said, "So, where ya'll from?" The Northern girl said, "From a place where they know better than to use a preposition
at the end of a sentence," The girl from the South sat quietly for a few moments and then replied, "So, where ya'll from,
#&%!$?"”

“I was forced to take a linguistics class to finish my english degree many years ago. I barely passed and have forgotten what little I learned.”

“LOL Pekka. I love the Ayn Rand story and the backpacking sentences. I think I'll use some of those!

windding - I really dig this class. Most people think I'm insane for enjoying a Linguistics class. But, what can I say?

The prof is an extremely interesting guy. He reminds me a lot of Reformed Lurker! It's crazy. This class doesn't really cover the phonetics (that was the last one... boring). It's more about context, standard English, arbitrary rules, etc.

Thanks to everyone for some great ideas. I'll be making an overhead and I will definitley be using many of the sentences you guys came up with. (did you catch that? i ended it w/ a prep!)”

“Where id RL been?

8|”

“I mean "has"......8)”