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PREPOSITIONS YOU CAN END SENTENCES WITH

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Contributed by: Richard Shrout on 8/7/2007

IN OTHER WORDS
BY THE MICCO MORPHEME ADDICT

PREPOSITIONS YOU CAN END SENTENCES WITH

There is no rule of English grammar that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, although many people believe there is. Also, there is no rule of grammar that it is wrong to split an infinitive. After all, the Star Trek theme said "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

A preposition is defined as a word or phrase placed typically before a noun and indicating the relation of that noun to a verb, an adjective or another noun, as English at, by, with, from, and in regard to.

That's rather unnecessarily complex. In fifth grade I learned that a preposition was a word that made sense if used before the word barrel, such as in the barrel, on the barrel, before the barrel, after the barrel, into the barrel, etc. You get the idea.

John Dryden first advanced the belief that a preposition may not be used at the end of a sentence because he mistakenly compared English to Latin. Grammarians in the 18th century popularized that mistaken idea, and it became a "rule" of schoolroom grammar. Winston Churchill ridiculed the idea by saying sarcastically "This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put."

It is unlikely he ever said such a thing, because "to put up with" is perfectly good English. The "up" and the "with" are not prepositions at all. They can be considered as adverbs or, to make it simpler to understand, "verbal particles" or part of the verb. Most of the great writers since the Renaissance have ended sentences with actual prepositions, but what most people assume are prepositions often may actually be adverbs or verbal particles. These morphemes can indeed sometimes serve as prepositions, but they don't have to. It depends on the context.

English is full of such confusion. Consider "stand up" ("to rise from a sitting position") with "stand up" meaning to defy, as in to stand up to a dictator or a bully, etc.) or "a stand-up guy" meaning an unyielding tough guy.

Then there is stand in, as "the actor's stand-in was prepared) or stand down (the commander ordered his men to stand down, i.e., not use their weapons.)

How about sit up, sit down, sit in a chair, sit-in a protest demonstration. The little words look like prepositions (which they could be in another context) but they are simply verbal particles or adverbs. To "sleep in" might mean to sleep in a bed (a preposition), or to "sleep in" late. You could sleep over at a friend's house.

This peculiarity of English is confusing to foreign students. When asked if he wanted more to eat, the exchange student replied, "No thank you. I'm all fed up." English is full of idiomatic traps because of these verbal particles. Consider the following:

"Why did you reach up and take down that book to look up in and read out of for?"

A native speaker of English readily grasps the meaning of this convoluted sentence, but it is a nightmare to a foreigner trying to make sense of of English, which is often quite senseless. Aren't you glad you already know English?

There are languages that don't have prepositions (Latin, classical Greek, modern Russian, etc.,) but express prepositional meanings by noun "cases," or special endings of nouns. There is ambiguity is that system, as any student of those languages can attest.

Esperanto, the "international language that works," has a simplified, logically consistent way to show all these relationships.

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