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From: larry@qantel.UUCP (Larry Barnes@ex2559)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: Being taken care of. (prepositions)
Message-ID: <401@qantel.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 31-Mar-85 16:19:48 EST
Article-I.D.: qantel.401
Posted: Sun Mar 31 16:19:48 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 03:39:11 EST
Reply-To: larry@qantel.UUCP (Larry Barnes@ex2559)
Distribution: net
Organization: MDS Qantel, Hayward, CA
Lines: 37

> 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 ...
> >
> >Do somebody knows?
> >                    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".
> -- 
> 
> 				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

The discussion about particles in English is a tad amusing
for the lack of scholastic references.  The two books I have
handy are:
	Winograd, Terry.  Language as a Cognitive Process (vol 1
    of 2, projected).  Addison-Wesley, 1983.
and:
    Bresnan, Joan.  The Mental Representation of Grammatical
    Relations.  The MIT Press, 1982.
Both go into the relatively recent phenomenon (historically)
of turning verbs that take prepositional phrases as
complements into verb-plus-particle combinations.  This is
akin to the separable compounds in German, but appear to be
an independent evolution in English.

(Sarima's comments about prescriptive grammar are right on.)

			 Larry