Korean Job Discussion Forums

[gatorchick82]

One of my students asked me today about when English speakers use adjectives with the prepositions 'for' and 'to'. He gave me some examples:

This English homework is difficult for me.
It's not important to me.

I couldn't give him any rule for those situations. I said I'd research it for him. I looked at some grammar sites like OWL but didn't come up with anything. Any information from fellow teachers?

[Woland]

If you look over on the jobs forum, Captain Korea has asked a similar question with regard to the adjective 'useful'. I answered there.

But your post has made me think more about it.

It seems that this is a matter of what linguists call 'government' - different adjectives govern different prepositions, and it probably just has to be memorized. This suggests that adjectives should not be taught as single words, but with the prepostitions they govern.

However, it may be that there is a consistent semantic difference between which adjectives govern 'to' and the ones that govern 'for'. Dave Willis, in his book Rules, Patterns, and Words suggests as much, and shows how corpora can be used to explore this issue. You may want to look there for more input.

If there is a clear difference, it will probably explain differences in meaning in sentences for those adjectives that govern both prepositions.

I hope this helps some. I don't know the exact answer, but this is the direction to take for answering the question.

MODS: Can we unite these threads in either forum? Grammar questions are usually in Jobs, I think.