Korean Job Discussion Forums

[yellowdove]

I'm having trouble answering this question - my head teacher asked me to explain the grammar behind the question 'To what do I owe this honour?'. I can explain to her what it means (showing respect to someone, a sentence that comes from a more chivalrous era) , but not sure why we would put the 'to' and the 'what' together, and the rest of the sentence structure. Any help would be appreciated!

[Seoulio]

NOt sure what you are asking exactly, but I will give a stab anyway.

As far as I know the only phrase in regular usuage starting with "to what" is the one you are using. , and it basicaly means, Whats he reason for......" whats the reason for this honor..

To what ( thing) can I attribute my good fortune?

Its basically a form of reverse personification, wanting to thank an inanimate object, which of course at its core is absurd. I would imagine this is a flourish of langauge coined hundreds of years ago to sound nice in say a sonnet or at least lines coming from a member of the Aristocracy.

it means "to what thing should I thank"

[some waygug-in]

To what (reason) do I owe this honour?

=

Why am I being honoured in this way?


It's just an old formal style expression, usually I've heard it thus:

"and to what do I owe this honour?"


No special grammar about it.

[Troglodyte]

You might also consider it a slight alteration of standard word order.

If the word order is intentionally changed (to add emphasis to a particular word) then it's called an anastrophe. (If the word order is altered because the speaker just has a bad command of the language it's called "poor language skills".)

Check out what Wikipedia has to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastrophe

[Simulacra]

so, the grammar rule there is that you never end a sentence with a preposition, i.e. "to" yo0u might also say "From which town do you come?" or "On what train do you arrive?"

[ChilgokBlackHole]

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

[Simulacra]

Ha! well put. he way they taught us this rule was you take the sentence "The fox ran ___ the dog." any word that you would put in that blank is a preposition.

[yellowdove]

Thank you for all your responses. Troglodyte, your answer of the anastrophe impressed her the most when I showed her your responses. I have a feeling that if she is stumped again and none of the foreigners here can answer , she'll want me to pose the question on this board. I tried to explain to her that there really wasn't a grammatical explanation, but the responses on here have satisfied her curiosity.

Thanks!

And if anyone else has more insight into it, feel free to post! I'll show her any more posts if you've got them.

[Old Gil]

IT IS PERFECTLY FINE TO END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION ENGLISH IS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE.

[kinerry]

not what, WHOM

[Simulacra]

So, after doing some research it appears that the the preposition rule stated earlier is a bit antiquated and based off the Latin linguistic structures involved in earlier iterations of the English language. Screw you high school English teacher. Nevertheless, that is the point of origin for the construct of the sentence "To what do I owe the honor?" Apparently, and unfortunately, much like every other part of our mother tongue, the answer to the question of when do i use it and when do I not is... "Sometimes"

[ChilgokBlackHole]

[andrewchon]

I thought that idiom was Shakespeare and he just messed with it to make it sound better (or fit them into the meter).
Well, it became an idiom because everybody started quoting it, I suppose.
You could tell your co-teach that poetry don't have to be grammatically correct.

[ChilgokBlackHole]

[Old Gil]

No. "What do I owe this honor TO?" is completely acceptable. Ending a sentence with a preposition is fine as long as there is a prepositional complement (what) to go along with the head 'to'. "Owe" is a ditransitive verb, meaning it has a direct and indirect object. Other examples are 'give' and 'send'.

"I gave her (IO) a kiss (DO)" fine and dandy like sour candy

"I gave a kiss (DO) to her" is the same, only using the dative alternate.