Getting with it
The other day the following two sentences were brought up at a Framenet meeting:
- He used an electric mixer to make the cookies.
- He used an electric mixer to make the cookies with.
That last with really shouldn’t be there, I suppose, but it absolutely makes sense why [hmm...was that a legal sluice?]. Searching for this sort of sentence on Google isn’t exactly trivial (especially since their * wildcard does weird things, like allowing extra words in parts of the search string where the * isn’t located). But you can search for questions, and get things like this:
- What did you use to color it with? Just pens? If so, what type of pens?
(yes, there are many “usta” matches to most searches; but many are legit)
Freaky, man. But this is another case where preposition stranding is basically the only option. The same goes for where at and (an idiomatic sense of) what for.
- Where did you audition at?
- ?? At where did you audition?
- What did you do that for?
- ?? For what did you do that?
But more freaky: you get sentences like With what move did Shawn Michaels use to win the match?. Buh.
Haven’t you read “Whom the Bell Tolls For”?
Can’t say as I have.
But, of which speaking.
This reminds me of that cell phone commercial where they have this old lady calling her friends saying “Where you at!?” Pure comedy!
But on a serious note, being a language major has made the sight or sound of prepositions at the end of a sentence comparable to fingernails scratching across a chalkboard. All of those sentences made me cringe and shudder, except for maybe “What did you do that for?” vs. “For what did you do that?” ‘For what did you do that?’ definitely sounds odd, however it’s probably more correct than “What did you do that for?” which sounds okay to my southern ears, although my linguist mind knows it’s not.
Well, sentence-final prepositions generally belong to the more informal, or at least non-literary, parts of the language. And I think that this fits with the fact that “where…at” is an informal, spoken-language construction. “What…for” is less marked as informal, though it might not find a comfortable place in a written work. But I think the “For what” version is out-and-out bad.