Grammar Puzzle

[alixtii]

Okay, in the passive voice prepositions lose their objects, because they end up referring back to the subject.

to yell at someone --> to be yelled at
to shoot at someone --> to be shot at
to whisper to someone --> to be whispered to
to drive by someone --> to be driven by

The only problem is that prepositions have to be followed by their prepositions in English--that's from where whence the rule that you don't end a clause with a preposition comes. (Caught myself just in time there. ETA: Thanks, wisdomeagle.) But how do you rewrite "I was yelled at" without ending the clause with a preposition? "I am the person at whom one yelled"? That's converting the sentence back into the active voice, which is not only cheating but also necessitates the clunky "one."

So are these uses of prepositions in the passive voice merely idiomatic usages, and thus exempt from the rule? Or is it simply wrong to use prepositions in the passive voice?

And don't say "the preposition at the end of the clause rule isn't really a rule anymore," because then you'd be precisely the type of people who are murdering the who/whom distinction. Say "to boldly go" all you want, and I won't care, but prepositions are sacred.

Although I do wonder if the preposition-at-the-end-of-a-clause rule comes from the same place as the now-defunct (says I) split infinitive rule: Latin. Just as infinitives in Latin are all one word (as they are in French), do prepositions in Latin have to be followed by their objects? Without positional grammar (as English has), it might be the only way to know which preposition goes with which object, but that would assume a lot of nouns declined in the ablative or the--well, the other preposition declension (my Latin is rusty)--scattered willy-nilly all over the sentence, and how likely is that?

Now I end clauses in prepositions all the time, because the American education system sucks. But that doesn't make it right.

ETA: Now, don't get me wrong. I know that plenty of respected grammarians already say its fine to end a clause with a preposition, and I fully expect "whom" to have disappeared from the language within the next century. Language changes, and it's not possible to create normative laws of grammar. But still!

ETA2: And, obviously, if I have to choose between a clumsy, clunky sentence which is twisted around itself in order to confirm to some rule, and graceful sentence with a preposition at the end, I'm going to go with the latter without all that much thought. It just annoys me that I don't have an option of a sentence which is both graceful and unequivocably correct.

ETA3: Here, here and here are a couple of links which sum up my position pretty well. I think it's a pretty common sensical one, and one that most of you would embrace.

ETA4: Strictly speaking, this type of construction isn't responsible for the murder of "whom," as that always involves a confusion between the subject and object pronominal forms, and in the types of constructions I'm interested in the object of the preposition drops out altogether, becoming the subject.

It's still a good idea to keep the preposition and its object together whenever there is an object, however, and that should be enough to keep "whom" alive. It's much more natural to use "whom" in "To ___ did you whisper" than in "___ did you whisper to?" By this rule, though, it's still perfectly acceptable to keep the preposition at the end, precisely because there's no object to which it needs to be attached.

The problem case in all this is passive interrogatives: is it "Who was shot at?" or "Whom was shot at?" Is it "Who was whispered to?" or "Whom was whispered to?"

ETA5: Actually, now that I think about, these structures aren't in the passive voice at all! The passive voice consists of changing a sentence so that the direct object becomes the subject and that the former subject, if it is retained at all, becomes an object of the preposition "by" ("I was shot by my teacher"). But in these constructions, it's not the direct object which is becoming the subject--it's an object of a preposition! Is it even grammatically possible to do this? Or, more sensibly, given the fact that we use these constructions (idiomatically?) all the time: is it appropriate to use these quasi-passive prepositional constructions in formal writing?

Or perhaps constructions like "shot at" are idiomatic constructions which collectively function as a single verb, in which case the "me" in "shot at me" would be a sort of direct object. In which case of course the "at" would be at the end of the clause in a passive construction: it's part of the verb.

This seems right to me, but I still don't know whether it should be "Who was yelled at?" or "Whom was yelled at?"

ETA6: As azdak points out, it has to be "Who was whispered to?" One would never say "Him was whispered to (by someone)."

Which implies (to me) that the passive-preposition construction parallels the passive voice, and "whispered to" functions collectively as a single idiomatic verb, taking a direct object and not an object of a preposition at all. As such, it wouldn't follow the usual rules for objects of prepositions (i.e. they should be kept "next"--with adjectives and whatnot intervening as per usual--to their prepositions, which they should).

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Which only goes to prove that I can't trust what sounds right in my mind. I continue to blame the American educational system.

Want to trade minds?