LMAO out, LOMA in
Over at Language Log, Mark Liberman has posted on a particular comment in a thread in the WordReference forums called Help with prepositions!. The thread begins with a request for native speakers to provide judgments on several sentences, each of which has what some might call a sentence-level construction, marking them as exclamations (what a nice place you live in) or questions. All of the predicators take PPs (of various semantic obligatoriness), and the question is when is it okay to ’strand’ the preposition.
The LL post already highlights some, say, interesting (coughlamecough) comments made by a strong advocate for pied-piping. But there are some other gems from both sides side of the fence. Herein, some of them to you I present.
That rule is a vestige of what is known as prescriptive grammar. The last 4 decades have produced a more scientifically oriented grammar known as descriptive grammar. (post)
Nice hedging on exactly how “scientific” descriptive grammar is.
When speaking, it would probably be best to use [p-stranding] as opposed to [pied-piping], which is technically more correct. If someone [didn't strand their preposition], most English speakers would actually think it sounds stupid, and thus wrong. It’s just bad grammar; it leaves the sentence “hanging”.(post)
“This is a great place you live in” “…in what? Don’t leave me hanging!” “…uh…”
There seems to be a suggestion creeping in here that an eccentric-sounding preposition coming first is more formal = better = a sign of a well-educated person. To me, it suggests exactly the opposite. Good communicators will not contort the sentence just to follow a supposed rule. If the preposition at the end bothers them, or if they think it may bother their audience, they will change the sentence. (post)
Hmm…the conclusion, I can agree with. But as for the relation to level of education, I’m skeptical.
he grammarians’ ship is going down! Someone throw them a life raft. The sun is coming up. Up is coming the sun. ? (post)
Nice rhetoric, but unfortunately in the ‘rise’ sense, this is likely the adverb. Unless the sun is coming up something. Creepy. And in response to similar prescriptive-bashing (though with V-particle examples):
LMAO, or should that be LOMA??!! (post)
Brilliant, I say. And finally, 60 posts later, the original poster adds some words of wisdom from the CGEL