preposition & relative clause marker: separate or togeth

[wkko70]

Greetings, fellow teachers.

As a non-native speaker teacher of English, I have some questions for native speaker teachers.

In relation to relative clauses (RCs) with prepositions, as far as I know, two constructions are possible.

1-a I stopped by the house in which Beethoven was born.
1-b I stopped by the house which Beethoven was born in.

Both are viable options, right? However, in some cases, one of them
seems akward. For example,

2-a Is this the key for which you've been looking?
2-b Is this the key which you've been looking for?

3-a This book contains a theory on which his disertation is based.
3-b This book contains a theory which his disertation is based on.

In the above cases, b seems to be natural. However in the next case, a seems to be natural.

4-a This is the man to whom I gave money this morning.
4-b This is the man whom I gave money to this morning.

5-a The man with whom I am staying is a doctor.
5-b The man whom I am staying with is a doctor.

What do you think? Grammar books do not deal with this clearly, and I don't know how to explain it. Is this one of those "case by case" things?
Please help me out

[JuanTwoThree]

1b seems more natural because the register of the sentence seems informal. The same can be said of 2b. I would write, or even say, 3a in a formal context but 3b in an informal one. Perhaps the context of talking about dissertations favours 3a.

I don't think "whom" is usually used without its preposition in front of it, so making your 4b and 5b strange and unnatural mixtures of the formal "whom" and the dangling prepositions afterwards. I would suggest that:

4c This is the man who/that/nothing I gave money to this morning

and

5c The man who/that/nothing I am staying with is a doctor

were "correct" in informal spoken and written English, leaving your 4a and 5a for only the most formal of contexts.

[ouyang]

The same principle applies to questions.

Who are you staying with?
With whom are you staying?

Grammar books do not deal with this clearly

That's because these constructions are related to the concept of adverb complements. They are intentionally avoided.

Interrogative adjectives are easier to explain. They allow any prepositional phrase to be separated.

Which house was Beethoven born in?
In which house was Beethoven born?

Which table is she sitting at?
What store did you go to?

Some grammarians have a problem with splitting some phrases of time, but native speakers don't.

What day is the party on?
Which month is your birthday in?

[woodcutter]

I thought you guys dealt with it fairly clearly, so why do we need to get into adverb complements? How does that help?

(It's dissertation by the way, OP. Don't hand one in and misspell that!)

[ouyang]

so why do we need to get into adverb complements? How does that help?

Well, it would be more accurate to call them adverbial verb complements, but as for your question woody, consider the following sentences,

"He comes from Canada." / "She's looking at the photos."
"I read the book from the beginning." / "They are eating in the kitchen."

Why can we ask,
"Where does he come from?" and "What is she looking at?"
but we cannot ask,
"Where (or what) did you read the book from?" or "Where (or what) are they eating in?"

The argument could be made that the first two prepositional phrases complete the meaning of the verbs. If we don't have any context, the meanings of the sentences, "He comes." and "She is looking" are unclear. However, the next two prepositional phrases are clearly removable adjuncts. "I read the book" and "They are eating."

I actually don't think the concept of adverbial verb complements is particularly helpful for EFL students, and a practical explanation of separable prepositional phrases probably wouldn't need to include them, but I believe a comprehensive explanation would.

[woodcutter]

I'm not sure about the examples.

"Where did you read from?" would sound OK in a certain context, and so would "what were you eating in" if we knew for sure they were in something (what being the relevant word in that case).

Can you give an example of the intimately linked verb/preposition pair not being able to be split up in a statement of the kind the OP gave where the formal/informal rule would not explain it?

[ouyang]

Compare "The city where I am from is very large." with "The city from where I am is very large." and "We didn't see the movie which he told us about." with "We didn't see the movie about which he told us".

The second versions of each sentence are not formal English. They're bad English. Of course, there's no such thing as incorrect English for some linguists. However, these "formal" constructions are never made by American native speakers, and a good writing teacher would correct them.

Remember Churchill's quote: "This is the kind of thing up with which I will not put!" It's actually not relevant because it is a phrasal verb, but it emphasizes the flaw in rule that prepositional phrases can always either be separated or not in relative clauses, depending on whether the tone is formal or informal.

[woodcutter]

I'm not too convinced about those either, since in my view anything with "be" (am from in this case) in it should be dealt with in isolation, and tell about is also unusual in that it usually cannot be used without an element in between. If not:

He told about the deer that run swiftly upon the plains

and

About the deer that run swiftly upon the plains he told

sound equally iffy really.

I think it is true that you have to take the phrasal verb-like properties into consideration though.

[JuanTwoThree]

What did you put the book we read out of back for?

[woodcutter]

Isn't that just question form selection again?

Why did you put the book we read out of back?

I suppose you can say:

What did you (put the book back) for?

so maybe this problem is concerned with the length and complexity of elements that can fit in those brackets in that structure.

The original post was concerned with the preposition followed by the relative pronoun and "what........for" can not usually be replaced by "for what" without adding "reason". If you add reason to Juan's example it sounds much better.

[ouyang]

Woody woodcutter, you remind me of the lyrics,

Code: Select all

All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, hmmmm

Here are two more relative clauses that sound wrong to me.
"The things about which we were talking "
"Teachers to whom these discussions appeal"

I think teachers and college graduates have been conditioned to think of these constructions as formal English. I've lost all interest in persuading you that adverbial verb complements are related to separated prepositional phrases or that they even exist. I won't be mentioning them any more on this forum.

But before I drop it entirely, certainly, the old rule that you never ended a sentence with a preposition was directed at questions like "Where is the stadium at?" and "When is your appointment at?" These prepositional phrases are classified as predicate adverbs, which are obviously verb complements, but you say these must be dealt with in isolation. Whatever. I think your comments illustrate why editors would avoid the topic of adverbial verb complements, if such a topic did in fact exist.

[woodcutter]

Huh-huh-huh-hah-huh!

Since this is a public forum and not a woodpecker cartoon you could try and explain what you mean for anybody reading who might be tempted, by the excellent explanation, to make serious use of the very hard work you have done with your grammar site.

I just don't follow. The two sentences you gave sound like formal English to me, it is just that "talk about" has some more formal synonyms that would be more natural.

"Where is the stadium at" doesn't work with "at" at the front, so I'm not sure what we are discussing with that. "At when is your appointment" again seems to be question word selection. "What time" works better in any situation in that example, and putting "at" right next to "when" highlights this. (mistakes always clang harder in a formal tone, too).

Anyway, look, I want to understand what you mean. "Talk about" has "about" as a a linked adverbial complement, not a preposition, I take it. But even so, doesn't that just push it into phrasal verb territory? Aren't you just renaming the particles of phrasal verbs? Maybe we need a sliding scale of degree of linkage?

[ouyang]

Prepositions do have a range of relationships with verbs, and that may have something to do with the constructions in which they occur. However, my lack of interest in discussing complements is mainly due to the fact that I decided about a month ago to simplify my grammatical color-code, and I no longer make a distinction between complementing and modifying prepositional phrases, unless they form predicate adjectives.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of classifying parts of sentences as either complements or adjuncts, consider prepositional phrases that combine with nouns.

"Some of the clothes are dirty." vs. "The shirt in the closest is clean. The meanings of some abstract nouns, like the indefinite pronoun "some", are unclear without a context or complementing adjective phrase. A comparison can be made with modifying adjective phrases, which merely give us more descriptive information about physical objects, like "the shirt" (which shirt).

The distinction between complements and modifiers is revealed when we encounter restrictions in how adjectival prepositional phrases can be combined. We can switch the positions of the two phrases which follow the noun in "The students in the bus from my school", but we can't switch the order of the phrases in "The students of English from my school". The meaning of the noun "student" includes at least one implied subject. The phrase "of English" is a complement, "in the bus" is an adjunct. Both phrases form adjectives.

However, I don't believe it's particularly useful to burden English students with the concept of complements. If a student turns in a composition with the sentence, "Some students in the bus of English are from my school.", I would correct it by explaining that combining the phrases in this order changes the meaning because prepositional objects can be modified by other prepositional phrases, e.g. "the people on the bus to Shanghai".

Similarly, I don't think it's helps EFL students to try to determine whether adverbial prepositional phrases function as complements or modifiers. I brought up the concept because this is a linguistics forum, and I believe the distinction has some influence on the separation of prepositional phrases, but I've always been aware that there is no direct relationship between complementation and separability.

As for classifying words as particles or prepositions, I think that is a more practical distinction to make. Consider the sentence, "We watched the documentary about swine flu and then talked about it." I would say that both occurrences of "about" are prepositions and have the same meaning, even though one phrase is an adjective and the other forms an adverb. I think "about" forms adverbs more often than particles. "wandered about". Compare "about" with a true preposition/particle "on", e.g. "put your hat on the table" / "put on your hat" / "put your hat on".

[woodcutter]

We might, I guess, say "Ming Dynasty vases inlaid with gold of the 15th century", but I can't imagine the mistake "students in the bus of English". Are both parts of my first example complements in your view? (in either case you are left wondering what the "of" is related to)

Would it be perhaps better to reserve the word "complement" for those things which are absolutely necessary to make a grammatical sentence, and have (unnecessary) adjuncts of differing degree of closeness, as we have for adjectives in examples like the "large, shiny, black table"? "Of" phrases would presumably be at the top of the pile.

If the prepositions which introduce complements, as you define them, are more easily shifted in position (in the kind of examples we are looking at, at least), does that have any direct bearing on the examples given by the OP, or did you only mention it because you were saying that the whole area of grammar is tricky to explain, and that in fact looking at level of formality suffices for those particular examples?

[ouyang]

I would classify the phrase "with gold" as a complement of the verbal "inlaid" and "of the 15th century" as a misplaced modifier of "vases".

I think all of the OP's prepositional phrases are complements, but that #1 forms different structures because it is only concerned with time or place. Determining whether a phrase is a complement or a modifier can be difficult. Most basic grammars only mention "subject complements" and "object complements". Predicate nouns and predicate adjectives are easy to identify, but many predicate adverbs are not.

All of the OP's phrases can be separated or not in relative clauses, and the difference is best explained in terms of informal and formal styles. However, the fact that there are prepositional phrases that must be separated and some that cannot be indicates that the informal / formal explanation does not completely account for these types of structures.

Classifying some prepositions differently than others, as you've suggested, is one way of explaining this to EFL students. It may be more practical than getting into the messy subject of complements, but I don't think it's accurate or consistent.