Winston Churchill once wrote the following memo to an aide (paraphrase, not direct quote) The aide had rewritten a sentence to avoid a preposition at the end. A father who often read to his children at bed time brought a book from his library which the children did not like. One of them said. Note 5 prepositions at the end of the sentence whose semantic content is clear.
Actually, "up" is an adverb in this sentence, as it often is. A preposition requires an object and "up" has no object here. The goal could have been achieved by writing, "This is a situation with which I will not put up." "Out" and "up" are both adverbs here. "Let the dog out," "bring the book up," in this usage both words stand without objects. This sentence can be rewritten, up to a point: "For what did you bring that book up out of which I did not want to be read to?" There is no way to avoid the "to" at the end of the sentence. You'd have to rebuild it completely: "I did not want you to read to me out of that book, so why did you bring it up?" This illustrates the folly of the trend of English educators in the 19th century to create English grammar books by simply translating Latin grammar books. English grammar and Latin grammar have different rules. Even if the rules of English grammar had never yet been written down, they still existed. The most famous idiocy of this movement was the admonition to never split an infinitive, as I just did in this sentence: to split. Of course no one ever splits an infinitive in Latin: Latin infinitives are one word! Amare = "to love." The above joke has been expanded because it turns out (another case of "out" being an adverb) that the book in question is a travel guide to Australia:
Aren't there implied objects that are understood but simply not explicitly stated in the sentence? If I say "Let the dog out," it's probably understood that I mean "Let the dog out of the house," or something similar. Similarly, with "bring the book up" there seems to be an implied "to our bedroom" or some such. Do the "out" and "up" really change to adverbs simply because the object of the preposition isn't stated? It seems strange to me to call them adverbs, because they don't really seem to modify the verb (let, bring). I'm not trying to argue with you here, I'm genuinely unsure. "Put up with" is a bit ambiguous because it has become one of those stock phrases whose original grammar and meaning seems to have been lost. But I suspect that in its original usage there was some implied object that was being "put up."
Actually "up" and "out" are more commonly adverbs than prepositions. We say "out the door," but it's really a shortening of "out of the door." If you say "let the dog out," it's shorthand for "let him outside," and you're not specifying whether he should go out through the door or the window because presumably the person you're talking to knows which is most appropriate. In any case, in both "out of the house" and "up to our bedroom," the noun is the object of the preposition "of" or "to," not of the adverb "out" or "up." The German cognates aus and auf are more commonly used as prepositions, suggesting that that's what they originally were in proto-Germanic, but they are also often used as adverbs just like in English. Auf means "up" as an adverb, but when it's used as a preposition it means "on" or "atop." The Indo-European languages are hamstrung by a pathetically small set of prepositions left over from the Stone Age, and unlike nouns, verbs and adjectives, there is no strong facility for importing prepositions from other languages. This leaves us with prepositions that are almost totally meaningless. Try explaining to a foreigner the difference between arriving somewhere "in time" and "on time, and then explain how that "in" and "on" correlate with the hundreds of other uses of those words! So the speakers of each language invent our own ways of expanding the set. In English we do it in three ways: Putting two words together to create a new preposition, such as "into," "without," "upon," "atop" (from "on top") and "about" (from "on by out") Using a preposition with another word that clarifies its meaning, such as the "out of" and "up with" discussed earlier Drafting another part of speech for use as a preposition, such as "absent" and "regarding" In my lifetime we English speakers have actually busted that paradigm and invented a new way of building compound words in which the relationship between them is clearly defined without needing a preposition. We place an adjective following (another participle used as a prepositionPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) a noun, a construction that was heretofore never used in English and therefore carries no risk of ambiguity. Look at new compounds such as: user-friendly, fuel-efficient, labor-intensive, property-poor, vitamin-deficient, cost-effective. Shakespeare, who greatly augmented our language with his own coinages, would be proud of us.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Multivalence When prepositional phrases bother me, I just kill them altogether: This is a situation I will not tolerate. A fun couple pages from Steven Brust: I've heard it said, "By his home shall you know him," and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and the auxiliary verb in his sentence, so let me tell you a bit about the home of Sethra Lavode. A bit is all I can tell you because I don't know Dzur Mountain all that well. For example, I can't tell you how far down into the mountain her dwelling extends. I've been told that the mountain is riddled with natural caves, caverns, and tunnels, and that some of these connect to the areas she has carved out for herself. One of these was where I had first appeared, long ago, in the company of Morrolan. It had seemed then that I was deep in the heart of the mountain and had to climb a long stone stairway to its peak; I have since learned that I was close to the top, and that when I emerged in Sethra's living area we were hardly closer: Dzur Mountain is very, very big. She had a library, but somehow I had never gotten around to inspecting it, so I can't tell you what she reads. On one side of the library are a few well if plainly furnished guest rooms, some of which I have used from time to time; on the other is a wide spiral stairway that leads up to the kitchen, or down to a hallway from which one can reach one of he three dining rooms of various sizes, two of which I'd eaten in, and the third of which, the Grand Hall, I stood in now; a sitting room where I'd once insulted Sethra (an insult stopping just smoke's weight of mortal); and two doors that go I know not where. At the end of the corridor is another spiral stairway: I don't know where this one leads to going down, or how it goes up, because it seems to me that it should lead directly up into the middle of the library, but there isn't a stairway there. There is little decoration. It is as if, over the millennia, she had lost patience for anything that attempted to brighten what was naturally dark, ornament what was naturally plain, enliven what was naturally severe. There were no bright colors in Dzur Mountain, yet nothing was rough; rather everything was subdued but smooth, as if her home were a monument to the effects of time. Her furnishings were all simple and comfortable, with cushions on hard stone chairs and light provided mostly by simple oil lamps or candles. There was little to show her history; or, indeed, that she had a history—that is, her home was noticeably lacking in those oddities one picks up over the years as gifts from friends, or objects acquired from traveling, or trophies won from enemies. The one thing of that kind was in the library, where there was a device covered in glass, with spinning metal inside. I had asked her about it, but Sethra denied knowing what it actually was and refused to say how she had acquired it or why she valued it. Other than that, as I say, there was nothing to which one could point and say, "Sethra Lavode has this object because it means somehing to her." I admit that I have, from time to time, speculated on why she had arranged her home like that, but I kept coming up against the same question: Were I somehow to achieve her age, how would I want to surround myself? And to this question I could not know the answer, which would always end the speculation, leaving me only observations. And that about concludes what I know about the home of Sethra Lavode—not much, considering how often I've been there. I've heard a great deal more, of course, running from the probable to the preposterous: labyrinths deep within the mountain where she conducts monstrous experiments; high towers in the very peak where she communes with the dead; hidden passageways to the Halls of Judgment; concealed rooms full of treasure; and so on. But I don't know anything about these (except I can pretty well deny the passageway to the Halls of Judgment: if that really exists, she owes me an apology for sending me the hard way). Little is known, more is suspected, and much is guessed at. And there you have Sethra Lavode as well, which ought to prove the point about reversing the subject and the auxiliary verb. (28-30) Then again, whoever it was that reversed the subject and auxiliary verb was probably trying to avoid a prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence. I'll spare the rest of the irony, but Brust's fans generally find that particular passage hilarious. ____________________ Notes: Brust, Steven. Issola. New York: Tor, 2001.
