Teacher Discussion Forums

Conventionally, we can only use a prepositional phrase at the beginning of a sentence if the main verb has an object of some kind - that is, it's either transitive or there is another prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence. (I have mentioned that this can be used instead of a linking word if there is no obvious way to link the idea of the sentence back to the previous one.)

I just got some homework back where a lot of students made a typical Polish mistake:

*On 15 October, took place a meeting.

The verb here is "took place." I noticed that I could either say:
1) A meeting took place on 15 October, or
2) On 15 October, a meeting took place.

Normally the second wouldn't be possible with an intransitive verb. What's happening here? Is it because the second element of the verb is a noun? Does this follow for all multi-word verbs ending in nouns?

Andrew, you've lost me. First of all because surely "place" is the object. Which would presumably be true for all verb+noun combos (?)

That apart, isn't "In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated" impeccable English?

You may be right about prepositions other than those of time:

"In the bathroom James played (for ages/hide-and-seek)" needs either of the bracketed options not to sound poetic/archaic/daft/ wrong (take your pick).

Even so there are poetic/archaic things like "Round the town we drove" .

I messed up big time there. Yes, it seems I was being far too general with the prepositional phrases. So it's the fact that it's a time expression that makes that prepositional phrase work. This is going to have a lot of bearing on my lessons of cohesion as if you can't think of a good linking expression, fronted prepositional phrases do the job.

I still think that "take place" is a multi-word verb though because it's meaning is different to the normal meaning of "take".

Conventionally, we can only use a prepositional phrase at the beginning of a sentence if the main verb has an object of some kind

They have some very strange conventions in your parallel universe.

Yes, thank you Stephen, I already said I messed up.

Time phrases ARE an exception.

Time phrases are not an exception.

In the Himalayas thousands are dying.