Hey Boys & Girls,
I know a lot of you have questions about prepositions...especially the use of prepositions and why sentences end with prepositions in English if there not supposed to. Right?
Anyway...I got this email from my sister yesterday which was a rather humorous example of her experience in trying to find out more about the use of sentences ending with prepositions so that she could better explain it to her students.
So, I'm posting it here for you to learn more about the use of prepositions...with her permission of course:
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yesterday...i was coming in the house and asked marmee...
'how long have you had that corn for?'
(she had brought it in from the village and it was sitting by the
door in the ice-chest (and it was not looking too appealing to eat))
papidos promptly let me know (grinnig) 'you never and
sentences with prepositions'
so i got to thinking about it...
i came up with the 'who is that for?' and we both kind of came to the
conclusion that it's 'ok' to use it with the interogative...
but started searching the 'all knowing google' to help me out and i found out
that it's...an old taboo do to latin similarities in our languages ect...
i had a fun time reading to papidos tonight all that i found along with this...
TWO WOMEN ARE SITTING NEXT TO ONE ANOTHER ON A PLANE,
ONE ASKS THE OTHER "WHERE YOU GOING TO?"
THE OTHER WOMEN HAUGHTILY REPLIES "DON'T YOU KNOW
YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO END SENTENCES WITH A PREPOSITION?"
THE FIRST WOMAN SAYS " WHERE YOU GOING TO - B*TCH".
for some reason he didn't think it was as funny as i did...but my point is now clearly understood
i also thought this was interesting...(from the Yahoo Answers site)
QUESTION: Are there cases when English prepositions at the end of a sentence are not wrong?
I saw a question about prepositions at the end of a sentence in the preschool section earlier today, and now I'm kind of stuck thinking about them, because I actually used one at the end of a sentence when saying something a moment ago.
I told my son (who was busy biting my desk): "Tables are not for eating: they are for eating at.".
I can't rephrase that in a way that would leave the general structure of the sentence the same. I mean, if I were to say "What are you getting at?" I could rephrase it as "At what are you getting?" which would be awkward because the former is used by everyone, but at least it would still make sense. But I can't say "Tables are for at eating." or "At tables are for eating." or any such thing...
So, would that make "Tables are for eating at." a grammatically correct sentence ending in a preposition? Don't worry about the failure of the schools system for not teaching me this: I'm foreign. I'm just curious.
ANSWER...
It is never wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. That is a dopey rule made up long ago by misguided scholars who thought English should be more like Latin. The word "preposition" means "comes before"---"pre-" + "position", so it must be wrong for it to come after, right? Wrong.
There is a way of looking at the grammar that makes "at" in your example not even be a preposition at all. "To eat at" is a phrasal verb, and "they are for eating at" is equivalent to "they are for using". In the sentence "He is eating at the table", "table" becomes the direct object instead of being the object of the preposition "at"
Asker's Comment:
Thanks everyone! Everyone had good answers. I had the intuitive feeling that it was a 'phrasal verb', except that I did not have the words to express that concept. Usually when learning foreign languages I totally ignore grammar - I just learn by doing what the natives do, which works great. :)
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Well, that basically sums up the whole issue of English prepositions when ending your sentences. I'm sure there are others who could explain this a little more technically.
And I'm sure there are even those who would disagree with the technicalities of the answer above. But for the average English student...I think this answer will be more than sufficient. ;)
