The following refers to our observationi on “Prepositions ending Sentences” in Grammar Slammer and online at https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000195.htm.
> >I believe Churchill’s correction to his sentence that ended in a preposition was incorrect. “Up with” is part of the verb “put up with”.
>> There is a class of verbs that are constructed of a verb and a word (in this case two) that is usually used as a preposition. The way to distinguish them is through their meaning. The term “put up with” does not mean “place in a higher location with”
>>I also think the point of the rule
is not that the object of the preposition precedes the preposition but that the preposition has no object. Usually when a sentence ends in a preposition the inferred object is already the object of the verb. Saying “with which” creates a word that can act as the object of the preposition.
>>For example, “I like the town I come from.” Where is the object of the preposition, “from”? “Town” is the object of the verb. I suppose one could say, “I like the town which I came from.” This would still violate the “rule” but not its spirit.
Dear D___:
“Put up with” is a idiomatic expression meaning “to endure.” “With” is a preposition; “up” is an adverb. We can drop the “with” if there is no object, as in the expression “Put up or shut up.”
In everyday English we often drop the relative pronoun in adjective clauses. The sentence about the hometown merely illustrates this.
The whole thing is bogus. If you check our newsletters online, you’ll see that we have received more correspondence on this “rule” than anything. The most striking thing is that no one follows it. The few nineteenth century grammar texts that mentioned it did so in the way we stated—that it was a matter of style, not of accuracy in grammar.
Having said that, we also do repeat that if you think a correspondent might not like it, then avoid it for reasons of taste and harmony.
See https://www.englishplus.com/news/news0201.htm and https://www.englishplus.com/news/news0401.htm for our newsletters on this.
I have a question. Consider the sentence I go shopping or I went hiking . I believe that shopping and hiking are gerunds, and they act as nouns instead of adverbs. Am I right? Or are those sentences grammatically incorrect?I look forward to readin you future posts.
These are usually considered gerunds. This makes for an interesting discussion about what part of the sentence they are. In a sense, they are part of a verb phrase. Some argue that when gerunds follow the verb “to go,” that is the only time “go” is transitive. It is idiomatic, but it is an idiom that has been around at least since the Middle Ages.
Some authorities would say that grammar rules for too long have tried to fit Latin constructions to English grammar. They would say that the concept of gerund is meaningless in English and that participles can act as adjectives but also as nouns and adverbs. One such authority contributed to an English Plus newsletter (back before we blogged): See https://www.englishplus.com/news/news0999.htm.