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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Being taken care of. (prepositions)
Message-ID: <374@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 18:06:30 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.374
Posted: Tue Mar 26 18:06:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Mar-85 00:44:38 EST
References: <186@ihlpm.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley friesen)
Distribution: net
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <186@ihlpm.UUCP> cher@ihlpm.UUCP (Mike Cherepov) writes:
>
>This is a general question about ending sentences with
>prepositions. 
>It formally appears to be an illegitimate deed, but
>such forms are universally spoken and otherwise used.
>
>Did those constructs officially (whatever that means)
>become an accepted standard?
>How is that treated in ole England? Does Ms. Thatcher
>use the title phrase as freely  as Reagan?
>
>Do somebody knows?
>And stuff.
>                    Mike Cherepov

	Actually they are not *really* prepositions, they are more
like adverbs, and they are a remnant of an *ancient* Germanic
construct, also found in German(where they are called seperable
prefixes).  Basically the pair of a verb and a "preposition"
act like a new (effectively) compound verb, except the "prefix"
goes at the end of the clause.  Thus "fill up" is a different verb
than "fill", and "put down" is a different verb than "put".
(Examples: He filled it up. You should put that down).
(See also an Old English Grammar)
	The (spurious) declaration that such constructions are
ungrammatical only dates back about a century, to the era of
prescriptive grammar, when all grammars were forced into the mold
of classical Latin, which does not have seperable affixes. Thus,
since all of the affixes havbe a correspending preposition, these
rule-creators decreed that they *were* prepositions, which  *do*
require an object.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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