Teacher Discussion Forums

It is proper to say/write:

I'll never forget the day on which I met you.

My "wonderful" Japanese grammar book says it is NOT acceptable to write:

I'll never forget the day which (or that) I met you on.


However, the same book says it is ok to write either of the following.

That is the house which I used to live in.
That is the house in which I used to live.

Why the discrepancy? What is the rule? Inquiring minds (my students) want an explanation.

I don't think it is wrong, but because the sentence has a high flown style, splitting the infinitive (an informal business) sounds awkward.

Thanks for the comment, woodcutter. I don't see that this is a split infinitive, however. The question is whether the prepositions IN or ON can be placed where I mentioned, in terms of their relative pronouns.

True. However, I think perhaps the same thing applies to splitting prepositions from relative pronouns. It sounds more informal.

It would help if the writers had considered if the preposition (and relativizer etc) in relation to 'meet' was even necessary before any apparent worrying about whether it could or should be left stranded or not:

I'll never forget the day I met you.
I'll never forget the day - (?which/OK-that) - I met you - (??+ on).
I'll never forget the day - on which/*on that - I met you.

It is this dispensibility that makes the (superfluous) additions start to sound odd (cluttered) and somewhat unacceptable (though the only truly incorrect combination IMHO would be that *I'll never forget the day on that I met you, in which the 'that' takes on a truer nounish i.e. demonstrative flavour, due to its following a preposition, which explains the "clash"); and does the stranding of the 'on' perhaps clash in a somewhat "transformational" sense? (That is, it is one thing to say 'I met you on a bright sunny Saturday', but quite another to ask 'When did I meet you', or indeed 'I'll never forget the day we met...(It was...)').

In comparison, 'live' MUST be paired somehow with 'in' to achieve an 'inhabit' (as opposed to 'be alive') meaning, so here the stranding or not of the preposition is no longer an issue (versus the absolute need for, the obligatoriness of, the preposition now), though the inclusion of the relativizer 'which' even when it isn't needed (in 'This is the house which I used to live in') is very much an issue still - well, at least to this informed (and native) eye! (See the alternative sentences that I provide below).

And as if all that unnecessary clutteredness wasn't enough, the writers have compounded the skewiness of the picture they provide by presenting their relatively formal phrasings as if they were the norm (though you can bet they haven't clearly marked them as 'formal'!), when the best thing would of course have been to provide and highlight the following two sentences (as formulated by me, FH!) before all and any other:

I'll never forget: the day we met.
That is: the house I used to live in.

Still, if a writer (or a student) absolutely insists on explicitly marking everything with relativizers, then the preposition doesn't need to be stranded, but just as (as we saw above) *I'll never forget the day on that I met you is unacceptable, so is *That is the house in that I used to live; the formal prep+relativizer phrasing thus throws up a complication ('which' is always acceptable' in the formal phrasing, but 'that' never) that an informal (preposition-stranding) phrasing doesn't i.e. that an informal phrasing "avoids".

Further discussion here:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 2678#42678