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OP "a silly rule, up with which I shall not put."
These things are not always prepositions, see http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=12094.
A good example of the difference might be something like:
1) Jack and Jill went up a big hill.
This is a classic example of subject-verb-object (prepositional phrase). It would not be correct to say:
2) *Jack and Jill went a big hill up.
But:
3) Jack and Jill ran up a big bill.
Up is not a prepostion. This is an example of the phrasal verb ran up of which a big bill is the object. We can say:
4) Jack and Jill ran a big bill up.
This structure is common to many of the Germanic languages, see the German separable prefix. The form of these separable prefixes is generally identical to prepositions and may, in fact, predate them, but that's another subject.
The notion of the phrasal verb seems to have been lost to the grammar of the prescriptive, if it doesn't match Latin there's something wrong with it, grammarians. It's my not so humble opinion that the cases in which the thing at the end of the sentence actually is a preposition are a result of the burying of the phrasal verb concept by those prescriptive grammarians and the reaction of native speakers who understood the phrasal verb on a native speaker level (without having any formal rule to quote) but were unable to separate it from the prepositional phrase structure.
And a challenge for anyone who thinks that "up with which I shall not put" is correct: parse that phrase; tell me what is the object of each of those things that you think are prepositions.
Dear Faldage,
Mind the corner you painted yourself into:
A good example of the difference might be something like:
1) Jack and Jill went up a big hill.
so far so good.
What wrong with: That's the big hill Jack and Jill went up ?
OP wsieber asks, "What's wrong with: That's the big hill Jack and Jill went up ?
A good question. Which gets us to the simple fact that the rules, such as they are, are reinvented every generation. We learn what sounds right by the time we are about three and anything that doesn't sound right is wrong, regardless of what some defender of the received rules may say. If this weren't the case we would still be speaking an inflected language in which relations between words would be expressed more by case structure than by word order and we would know the difference between prepositions and phrasal verb affixes. As it stands we have nothing to rely on except William Safire's rule, "If it sounds funny, the hell with it." Most of us who think that "it is I"* sounds funny will continue to say "it's me" and let the linguists worry about whether the verb to be has gained a transitive sense.
*Does anyone argue that it should be "it am I"?
Dear Faldage: How about a discussion of the correct usage of "will" and "shall". In the Churchill quote, it seems to me that "I shall not put" is weak, and "I will not put" is stronger, indicating volition, where "shall" is simple futurity.
where "shall" is simple futurity.
------------------------------------
Was he not talking about what he would or would not do in the future?
wow
No, he was telling what he damned well would not do.
OP I have this rule categorized (rightly or wrongly) as another one of those rules that someone decided people should follow without any basis in historical usage. I was once given an assignment in an English linguistics class to listen to normal usage and count the occurrences of will and shall. I heard zero cases of will and an equal number of cases of shall; I heard many cases of 'll.
If someone asks you to submit to some humiliation, would you not think "I will not!" stronger than "I shall not"? I shall not sounds wimpy to me.
OP The rule changes depending on whether the subject is first person or second/third person.
In reply to:*Does anyone argue that it should be "it am I"?
I do.
-- Sam.
Leading me to the question: is the marvelous Dr Seuss known outside the US?
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