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As for the second question, I think I agree with Mav. In short, I would use on, because it's not a specific address.
My Uncle has a shop on Hawthorn Road.
My Uncle has a shop at 615 Hawthorn Road.
As for Mav's examples:
1. "Two cars and a bus collided in the High Street today"
2. "Two cars and a bus collided on the M4 today"
I can (just!) imagine "Two cars and a bus collided on the High Street today" but "Two cars and a bus collided in the M4 today" creates an alarming mental picture of all the vehicles ploughing into the road surface itself.
Why is one substitution possible and not the other? Is the M4 (and other motorways like it) a special case because it is so big it is not merely a road but a geographic feature? Possibly - I have the same reaction to "a crash in the Appian Way"...
3. "Seventeen shops in central Croydon closed last year"
4. "Seventeen shops on Pembury Hill closed last year"
in a town, on a hill (and if Pembury Hill is the name of the town, in can be substituted without problem.
Not sure these are really relevant to the initial problem which seems to be about location relevant to roads.
5. “The car was standing at the corner outside Woolworths”
6. “The woman was standing on the corner outside Woolworths”
"On the corner" seems to me to imply a location behind the kerb/curb (I was going to say on the pavement/sidewalk, but as a building can also be on a corner, it goes further back than that.)
"At the corner" is vaguer - could refer to vehicles on the roadway itself, people or things on the pavement or buildings set back from the pavement.
Which really messes up any theory I have as when I started this post my basic theory was 'on' for big roads that double as huge vague locations, 'on' or 'in' for smaller roads with more specific locations and 'at' for specific detailed locations such as where two roads meet. And now 'on' has snuck up in an evem more specific meaning...
..I remember why I stopped coming here. It does my head in...
OP
My Uncle has a shop at 615 Hawthorn Road.
I was thinking the same thing too, but it gets confusing when everyone uses different prepositions in one sentence and deemed it as correct! I think on is for a place that is on a particular road but you're not certain where it is at exactly, and at is for a place that you already know where it is.
Is schlemiel correct?
I thought it was Yiddish slang.
Among Hoffmann's longer works are DIE ELIXIERE DES TEUFELS
(1816), which studied the theme of doppelgänger. Alternate personalities or
their shallow equivalents can be found in 'Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht'
(1815), where a man meets both the shadowless Peter Schlemiel and
Erasmus Spikher, who has lost his reflection. LEBENS-ANSICHTEN DES
KATERS MURR (...), a fictional autobiography of a cat and a direct parody
of Goethe's The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, was published in two
volumes in 1820-21.
My Uncle has a shop at 615 Hawthorn Road
Absolutely ... use at when it preceeds a number "at 615"
Otherwise the shop is somewhere on Hawthorne.
who's this "we", white man?
OK maverick, I realise that I answered with too little thought and too glibly. I took the simple approach of looking at the examples given and no deeper. I agree with all your illustrations
and am left only with the obvious conclusion that there is a difference in usage between the UK and the USA and maybe half a dozen other countries. Bridget's thoughts, with which I also agree, suggest that there are complex common usages that people are familiar with, but it is not clear, to me at least, (I am trying to be really cautious now
), that grammatical rules cover all these ramifications.
dxb
That's an excellent point Jazzo - I'll buy that. It certainly fits my feel for UK usage that uses 'in' for reflecting a kind of immersion in a closed-in environment – as Bridget notes, saying “in the M4” or “in Route 206” hi W’ONderman! feels completely wrong for that reason.
I also found myself thinking today that it would feel most natural to say “on the Champs Elysees” and inconceivable to say ‘in’ – so I think you have correctly identified that the usage differences stem from a subconsciously different feel for the buildings and spaces and roads which comprise the whole reference.
BTW Bridget, if you think my refs #3&4 are an odd fit in this discussion, try imagining that Pembury Hill is the name of a road… try swopping the name a bit… Also, there is another legitimate UK version I think: “There is gloom on the High Street as retail sales take another dip in favour of the out of town stores…”
Oh, and BTW I also realised today that my aberrant usage of “on the high street” may have also been influenced by the patterns of Welsh I hear around me every day: their form is “ar y Pendre”, literally rendered as “on the Top of Town”. So I won’t blame all my American friends just yet.. ;)
Keep thinking about the differences of being in a plaza.. or just on some pavement, and you'll be an award winning architect in no time!
JazzO, this is great. Fits perfectly with what I was trying to say about 'important' roads taking 'on' and lesser roads taking 'in' as well as explaining across-the-water variation. Thank you!
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