What's wrong with this sentence?

Indeed: ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I can not put!

 

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well i was always taught after a comma you dont need the word and
also the full stop thing well i was taught to put it after the sentance not after anything else

 

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It means "I envy country X".

Pefectly summarized in last chapter of the book "Day of Empire" by Amy Chua. A Chinese student was throwing stones during protest at US embassy in Beijing. Few days later that same student came to apply for a student visa to go to graduate school in US. When a reporter asked him about the seeming inconsistency, the student replied: "If I had good opportunities in America, I would not mind American hegemony so much."

They only hate as long as they feel excluded. It's envy, not hate.

 

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Wow, I forgot about making this thread. (musta been drunk)
Anyway I just read it and there's some funny answers. This is my favorite quote form redunderarmy

Damn it, that made me laugh.

 

I blieve the quotation you attribute to Shaw should be attributed to Churchill. " This is the sort of thing up with which I will not put "

 

Oli already caught that one.

 

Beware the dreaded split infinitive ! You have been warned.

 

Do you know the silly origins of that rule? Not sure I have it correct but I think it is a "hang-over" from the era when only Latin was considered the language of the educated. As the vernacular became acceptable in universities etc, the idea was that at least “proper use” of it should resemble Latin. In Latin the infinitive is impossible to split from the verb root because it is one of the possible endings attached to the root.

That "do not split the infinitive" rule makes as much sense and reflects on the intelligence of the proclaimers as would the Rule: "The only correct dress is the Togo."

PS I know you were only joking with me, but could not pass up the opportunity to show how stupid that rule is.

 

Aaah, it's not a bad rule. It's just not properly a rigid one. You should have a reason to break it, is all.

Mr Eulenspiegel has answered the OP question, building on the work of others before him.

As far as what's wrong with the sentiment, I don't see much wrong with it.

Something similar is visible in conquered peoples deciding whether to assimilate with the new order of things. They aren't wrong, even if their motive is simply to avoid being a target - get behind the gun, as it were.

 

I think the fact that it serves no useful purpose and is limiting is reason enough. I.e. all useless rules with no purpose should be at least be ignored if not actively attacked. (But if they are embodied in laws, like can't drink beer on Sunday etc. then the attack is best attempted via legal means first.)

For example, in my youth the laws enforced the exclusion of blacks in restaurants that did not want to serve them. We did first go to the courts, but that failed, so we intentionally broke the law. After we had, in Maryland where I was active, a graduate student and older than most in the movement, about a half dozen cases in the court we left after the police arrived and the owner read the "no trespass" law to us to avoid more arrests.

It was funny as was written for farm land. Lots of paragraphs about making restitution for cut fences etc. We mainly hit the cheaper restaurants* - precursors of McDonalds where the poor blacks wanted to eat inside.** Often I had to help the owner read the law. The police would not evict us until it was all read. It became a ritual after a few weeks -everyone knew the game and I did not have time to waste as an almost literate manager tried to read the law, so I read it to help him out and then we went outside to picket for an hour or so, often without me. I coordinated the whole attack - sometimes simultaneously on 35 different restaurants in Baltimore on a nice summer day when we had more BBs (black bodies) than transport to deliver them. My title was "transportation coordinator" but I really ran the show at the operational level - told everyone where to go, what car to get in, etc.
---
*Many had “white” in their name: White Coffee Pot; White Castle, White Tower, are three I still remember well.

**They could go in, get food in a paper bag and leave to eat it sitting on the curb outside, rain or shine. I understand well why Obama's ex preacher is bitter. He is about my age and surely did this many times.

 

It's a bigoted strawman and red herring.

 

A bigoted strawman and a red herring walk into a bar.

 

The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve your kind in here."
So the Strawman says...

 

I find it curious.

The 'media' in the United States claim the world hates the United States. Just hates us. Can't stand us.

However, more people come to the United States with the intention of staying here and making a life here than any other nation on Earth. People come here legally and illegally, but they come here.

Perhaps people don't hate the United States as much as the 'media' claims? Or, as has been posited by - and my brain has fuzzed out - one of my favorite radio talk show guys (either Dennis Prager or Hugh Hewitt) saying, "The world doesn't hate us; the Leftists of the world hate us. That includes the Leftists of the United States."

And that is pretty much true.

 

The bartender says, "Holy Cow! A walking strawberry and a red herring! Call Geraldo!"

 

It serves the very useful purpose of preventing habitual placement of words that "lean" - that aim at other words, and direct attention to what comes next - at the ends of sentences, where they are followed by a full stop and require mental review of the sentence.

You can do it, but you shouldn't be deaf to the thud and awkwardness if present.

You seem to be mixing up the country and the government.

Even taking the point, the US is rich - rolling in money. It's kind of pathetic for the rich kid to think all the friends he buys really like him - even if some of them do.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but in proportion to its size the US doesn't attract that many - even counting the Mexicans right on the border (the longest border between a rich and a poor country in the world). Last I checked several countries had more immigrants by percentage than the US does.

So between the money and the convenience, the empty space and the disorganized border control, the fact that for many being inside the US protects one from the US, there's no sense spraining your arm patting yourself on the back for living in a place other people want to come to. If you weren't here they might like it even more.

 

I am not suggesting that prepositions should go at end of sentence or that the infinitive should be split. I am only objecting to rules that impost that, especially natural and common use produces that. It is IMHO, idiotic to mandate something only because that is the way the Romans did it (I.e. Latin cannot split the infinitive, etc.) Human language is one of man's most creative endeavors - one that even the ill educated can contribute to. -woops one to which even the ill educated can contribute.

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- woooops again - now I am emulating German with the verb at the end.


I did so to gracefully point out that placing even the most important word in the sentence at the end of the sentence (as German does) IS NO PROBLEM - I.e. it "leans" to use your term, often all the way back to the start of the sentence. Your argument that such "leaning" would "require mental review of the sentence...." is false, and only reflects that you do not know how humans comprehend sentences.

Briefly we process the sound stream at a sub-conscious level and keep all possible interpretations "alive" as long as possible. I.e. we do not "review" a sentence to find what words at the end are leaning back to as you might naively believe. Instead as the sound stream progresses, we IN OUR SUB-CONSCIOUS PROCESSES drop some of the now impossible interpretations. A well constructed sentence is ANY which at its end point has eliminated all possible interpretations but one. There is all most every possible sequence you can imagine of words used in some languages. English has as its most common order "Subject verb object" but that is not any better or correct that all the other sequences possible (and all are in use in now living languages.)

Consciousness is the limit - not language or sub-conscious processing. For example "the cocktail party effect" I.e. you are sub-consciously processing several speakers but only consciously following one, until one of the others mentions your name or something else of considerable interest to you - then effectively what happens is that sub-conscious FULLY PROCESSED (the sound stream, which is continuous, was parsed into words, the word were looked up in your "lexicon" to determine what roles they can play (e.g. "roll" can be verb used with noun ball or food and both will be keep active as the sentence progresses until one is eliminated) and their meanly (which is not the same as their possible roles, etc. for other details not worth telling now.

If you want to know more, study up on the class of psychological experiments called "dichotic listening" - two different meaningful sound streams separately played via ear phones into your two ears. - Soon you are not even consciously aware of the one you are not paying attention to, but is being fully process and can control how you understand the one you are paying attention to if it is not "well constructed" - i.e. has two different possible meanings when the sound stream is complete. Which you take it to be will be controlled by the one you consciously were not even aware of.

For an example of an imperfectly constructed sentence that has been used in "dichotic listening" tests:

"The boys were throwing stones and the bank when a man told them to stop."

As you only read the above, you probably understood "bank" to be a place where one can deposit money, but if you were in a dichotic listening experiment and in your “not attended” ear, the story line had been about some boys who grew tired of fishing and started to see if they could toss stones to the other side of the river, then in your consciously attended ear, your understanding would be that the "bank" was the side of a river.

Another example:
The horse raced past the red barn on the hill fell.

This is a perfectly good sentence, but one in which you prematurely drop IN YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS PARALLEL PROCESSING OF MANY POSIBILITIES the correct choice of the roles the various words can play so when it is over it seems to be a badly formed sentence. The human brain is a parallel processor of great capacity - only your consciousness is limited and serial.

Summary:
Your comments are based on lack of understanding as to how humans actually process sentences. We do rarely need to "review" to understand the words at the end, even in the extreme case of German, when the most important word is often at the sentence end.

 

What you seem to object to is the manner in which you imagine such rules are imposed.

And in truth grammar rules are too often imposed in that fashion, on captive students. But such mistaken rigidity is not necessary, and a more reasonable take on grammar rules - as guides for the undecided and inexperienced - removes your apparent objection.

But we note:

Which means if you are writing English and you are careless with which word you put at the end, you can easily produce a sentence in which an ordinary reader has to break their natural train of comprehension and mentally review, if only for a split second, to get the intended meaning. And so there is a rule, or strong hint if you prefer,

-> for writers of English <-

that prepositions should not be placed the end without a good reason at.
that prepositions should not be placed at the end a good reason without.
that prepositions should not be placed the end a good reason without at.

In fact I read that "bank" as the side of a river immediately, and only your suggestion of money brought the other meaning to mind.

Germans might not need to review when they hit a surprising verb at the end, but most English faced with your horse sentence (say) do.

And imposing that necessity on one's readers should be intentional, if done at all.

 

Wow Oli is smart to have caught the riddle.

 

To iceaura:

Like all humans, your speech is guided by a very complex set of NATURAL rules, which are not yet well understood. Imposing arbitrary rules also is not generally desirable, although it does allow the educated to look down on the uneducated who did not get these man-made rules instilled in them in their youth.

Some artificial rules are useful in aspects of language that have only recently developed, such as writing speech down in a set of symbols, but imposing more rules, some in conflict with the natural rules, on speech itself is rarely if ever useful. Norm Chomsky uncovered a few of these natural rules. If you are interested in learning more about them, do not try to read any of his writings. (Steven Pinker is much easier to understand. I tend to try to read the original author’s expositions, rather than what some “expert” writes about them, so I own three of Norm’s books, but that was a waste of money. Only a professional linguists can comprehend him.)

An example of a useful artificial rule in writing languages derived from Latin or Greek is “Place a period at end of sentence and capitalize the first letter of the next.” To appreciate the arbitrary nature of this rule, note this rule could be: “Separate sentences with // .” I am not opposed to rules that are useful, only those that conflict with the natural rules of speech.

As we do not yet know most of these natural rules, the best we can do is to observe their effect in the vernacular. I.e. in the speech of people who have NOT been the victim of some indoctrination of what is “correct” speech. I.e. people who do not know that it is poor style to end a sentence with a preposition or that splitting the infinitive is not following the style of the Roman’s Latin, etc.

I am slightly willing to accept the rule against “double negation” in sentences, as “double negation” is illogical, but it not any interference with understand correctly the intent of the speaker. “Double negation” occurs in all languages and thus is compatible with the natural rules of speech. - In fact it usually aids understand as it serves to re-enforce the negative meaning.

Don’t expect me to soon give additional information to you, as I ain’t gonna say nothing more about this than the above.

I am sure you can understand that sentence even though it uses “Don’t,” “gonna,” has “double negation,” ends in a preposition, and “soon” splits an infinitive! Although it violate at least four* of the English teacher’s “good English rules,” it is not a violation of the rules of natural speech, so you understood.

*Perhaps 5 violations? - Back in dark ages, when English teachers had me captive, using “don’t” instead of “do not” was also a violation of their arbitrary rules, but I think the vernacular has finally won that battle. It always wins in the long run – that is how languages evolve. Have you ever tried to read the “correct” (for its day) English of Beowulf?

Arbitrary rules that only serve to facilitate social discrimination against the poorly educated are both silly and unfair. (They are already disadvantaged enough by the lack of education society gives to the poor.) Shaw made this “Language-rules-are-for-social-discrimination” point forcefully in Pygmalion (better known as “My fair lady”). I agree completely with him.

BTW If you want to learn more about the fact that all the possible interpretations of a sentence are carried in parallel in the sub-conscious and reduced to one when or even before the sound stream of the sentence ends, see read some of the original papers of Broadbent. He first (I think) realized that we process many different possible interpretation in parallel and introduced the term “bottle neck” – search on that plus his name should lead to your better (less naive) understanding of all this. At least you will then understand that we do not need to “refer back” to process the last words as you asserted.

Final note: When I said that all possible sentences are being constructed in parallel as the sound stream progresses you must understand that I am speaking of grammatical structure, not the facts expressed by the sentence. For example:

“Bill hit the much weaker and scared _____.” sound stream is processed as it progresses something like this:

As sound stream progresses;

“Bill” is looked up in the lexicon to yield:
Possibly a verb (object required) or possibly a noun (two alternatives: Person's name or statement of money due)

Then after “hit” is available and looked in the lexicon the sub conscious is holding:

“Hit” is possible verb (object required){look for associated noun (like baseball, car etc.)} or possibly a noun or possibly a past participle modifying Bill in the case when “Bill" is name etc. (I am sure there is more possiblities by now.)
“Bill hit” is possible subject / verb combination with high probability.
As is:
“Bill hit” is possible "named object" / past participle combination (As in “Bill hit by the speeding truck.”)
Etc. for many less likely combinations - about 20 sentence structures at this point I would guess are active candidates in your sub-conscious.

Then the sound stream gives: "the” and the lexicon adds: “expect unique case, probably some noun or pronoun.” and may drop the possible structures down to only 15.

Etc. etc. ( I will not continue with details. You need to learn to learn about the increditable information you have stored in you adult lexicon and how it is used.)

After the sound stream is to:
“Bill hit the much weaker and scared”

Many of the earlier possibilities have been dropped. For example your subconscious is now almost certain that Bill not the type of thing the VISA card sends monthly, etc. and has ALREADY narrowed the sentence grammar down to only one possibility. It lacks only the specific noun or pronoun fact to fill in the blank it constructed for holding the direct object of "Bill hit" (subject verb) combination now accepted entirely sub-consciously. I.e. your sub-conscious is waiting for a probable: Tom, him, John, child, etc. (but not “them” as the “the” eliminated that structure with a plural objective for "hit.") but still possible, but less likely, is dog, cat etc. to complete the meaning.

Note that if the “and weaker” were not in the sound steam the possibilities are greater. For example the sentence could have been: “Bill hit the much weaker board, post, etc..” But when “scared” was looked up in the lexicon, part of the information stored there is: (attribute of animate objects only)

I hope you now understand why what you originally based you argument upon is false and only, as I said before, reflects your (and 99% of the population’s) ignorance of how the miracle of speech is achieved.

SUMMARY Speaking and understanding sentences makes extensive use of the vast store of information unconsciously stored in your mental Lexicon. First the sound stream (which normally has no breaks of silence between words) is parsed in to words. Each of these words is looked up in your lexicon to find the possible grammatical roles it can serve and for each of these roles what is also needed (for example some words in their verb role are “marked “ transitive or will need an object) At this stage your subconscious is not really interested at all in the meaning of the words. It is busy trying to reduce the initially multitude of grammatical structures down to one in which all of the words have only one role. After this is done, then the meaning of the words IN THIS ROLE, is used to make sense of the sentence.

The problem I illustrated before with sentence:
“The horse raced past the big red barn on the hill fell.”

Is that before you even get to the “fell” at the end of the sentence, your sub conscious has already reduced the multitude of possible grammatical structures down to a single one in which “horse” is the active subject, “raced” is the verb (in its intransitive alternative)* etc. I.e. all the words have a role assigned and then there comes that “fell” with no “slot” in the grammatical structure to fill. Your sub-conscious was tricked by fact that horses do often race as your lexcion allowed with high probability, but in this case “raced” starts a past participle phrase and the sentence then needs “fell” to fill the verb slot in the correctly constructed grammatical structure of the sentence.
*”Raced” can be a transitive verb also but then your sub-consious would have needed an alternative word to play the role of subject. For example: “Jack raced the horse.”