Quote #008: If you speak the word it shall own you, and if you don’t you shall own it

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So… is the to before an infinitive a preposition? If you have a sentence, e.g., “He decided to write a blog post on the topic,” is the to a preposition, or is it just a part of the infinitive?

It’s a tricky question, is the short answer. The detailed answer starts with the fact that our current to infinitive form is a survival not of the Old English infinitive form but of the “inflected infinitive” form (the infinitive inflected in the dative case, which was the normal case following the preposition to). This form indicated purpose, and took the preposition to (an example from Genesis: “Ðā ġeseah ðæt wīf ðæt ðæt trēow wæs gōd tō etenne” – “Then the woman saw that the tree was good to eat”). You will see, on the most excellent guide to Old English inflections in the world, that, for instance, witan (know) is, in inflected infinitive, tō witanne. Modern English equivalents of this usage include “he came to help” and “he prepared to depart.”

So why does that matter? Because in reality it’s still the case that the infinitive only takes to in certain circumstances. Now, it is a belief on the level of superstition that to is an inseparable part of the infinitive, and it is now completely standard to cite English infinitives with to. This is because with the loss of inflectional affixation, to is effectively the infinitive’s only unique distinguishing mark. And, indeed, the to is used more widely on infinitives now than it was in Old English – it is skipped mainly just after auxiliaries. But analytically it is still a separate piece.

There remains from this the issue of whether, coming before the infinitive, it is actually a preposition or not, and on that matter, allow me to quote from the Oxford English Dictionary:

in mod.Eng. the infinitive with to is the ordinary form, the simple infinitive surviving only in particular connexions, where it is very intimately connected with the preceding verb…. To a certain extent, therefore, i.e. when the infinitive is the subject or direct object, to has lost all its meaning, and become a mere ‘sign’ or prefix of the infinitive. But after an intrans. vb., or the passive voice, to is still the preposition. In appearance, there is no difference between the infinitive in ‘he proceeds to speak’ and ‘he chooses to speak’; but in the latter to speak is the equivalent of speaking or speech, and in the former of to speaking or to speech. In form, to speak, is the descendant of OE. tó specanne; in sense, it is partly the representative of this and largely of OE. specan.

Quote #007: Save your white penny for your black day

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احفَظ قِرْشَك الأبْيَض لِيَوْمِك الأسْوَد

Save your white penny for your black day

A penny saved is a penny earned (Idiomatic translation)

Arabic Proverb

Click here and get pieces of cheese for the mice Milly and Billy while revising prepositions.

Abstract The literature suggests children with autism use communication primarily for requests and protests, and almost never for information-seeking. This study investigated whether teaching “Where” questions using intrinsic reinforcement procedures would produce the generalized use of the question, and whether concomitant improvements in related language structures, provided as answers to the children’s questions, would occur. In the context of a multiple baseline across participants design, data showed that the children could rapidly acquire and generalize the query, and that there were collateral improvements in the children’s use of language structures corresponding to the answers to the questions the children asked. The results are discussed in the context of teaching child initiations to improve linguistic competence in children with autism.

from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Nobody’s been using Latin much — at least not for a couple hundred years — so the British have taken possession of it.

Americans could never own Latin. For one thing, the Romans never even visited New York. And the Brits had already beaten them to it. By the time America was breaking free of England, Latin was already a wholly-owned subsidiary of English. This is ironic, because if the Romans had kept their empire intact a bit longer, English would have been an obscure Germanic dialect.

The Brits own Latin. They write all the textbooks. The definitive texts of Roman authors are the Oxford editions. In movies, Romans almost always speak with a British accent. Even Russell Crowe, who is Australian, followed this rule.

If America wants to take over any language, it should be Dutch. After all, New York used to be called Nieuw Amsterdam. It was the capital of Nieuw Nederland, which took up a good part of what is now New England. There are all sorts of Dutch names on maps of New York: Brooklyn, the Bronx, Coney Island, the Bowery, Yonkers. Like the Romans, the Dutch once ruled a mighty empire. And they make great chocolate, something the Romans never mastered, since they never got around to conquering Mexico.

Dutch is a beautiful language, quite similar to English, but without as many annoying spelling rules. It’s almost impossible to be unpleasant while speaking Dutch. Even insults sound just moderately rude in Nederlands.

Julius Caesar and his army did visit England —Britannia to them — and left all sorts of ruins to prove they had occupied the island (except for Scotland, because —well, why bother?) Because of their long acquaintance with the Romans, the British were in a position to snatch up Latin when the barbarians set it out on the bargains table.

As a result, once English grammarians got around to dissecting their own language, Latin seemed infinitely more logical. Many rules of English grammar spring from the realities of Latin. For example, the rule ‘never split an infinitive.’ In Latin, one can’t split an infinitive because it is one word. English infinitives are always two words: to go, to see, to want.  Following this rule replaces normal expressions such as ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’ with odd phrasings — ‘boldly to go’ or ‘to go boldly.’  What do we do with “We expect the population to more than double”? Dax is not willing to boldly attempt a rewording of that sentence.

Another example is prepositions. As we all know, “A preposition is something you never end a sentence with.”  The Romans never did. They knew that ‘pre-’ means before, and saw no reason to put them anywhere else.

But English is structurally a Germanic language, with lots of phrasal verbs like ‘be afraid of’ and ‘be proud of.’ In Latin these are one word – timere, superbire – and take either a direct object (not a prepositional phrase) or some sort of ablative (means, cause, etc.) An English writer can reword sentences to avoid putting prepositions at the end, but sometimes it sounds worse than the original ‘incorrect’ sentence, especially if it’s a question. “Who are you talking about?” becomes “About whom are you talking?”

Dax is a Latinist; he tries to follow the rules, however silly it makes him sound. He avoids splitting infinitives and leaving prepositions hanging onto the end of a sentence, but normal people give him strange looks. For a while he even gave up contractions, but it made him sound like a robot. He still tries to pronounce double consonants, and pronounces the silent ‘t’ in ‘often’ and ‘subtle.’ People frequently ask him, “What country did you grow up in?”

His reply is always the same: “I think you mean, ‘Up in what country did you grow?’”

But back to New Amsterdam. The editors of Edaxicon would like to make the Dutch an offer: we want your language. You may keep using it, of course. We will simply borrow its grammar and spelling rules and apply them to English, begin promoting Dutch in our schools, and change place names back to the original Dutch.

The benefits to Americans? We can stop getting into arguments about prepositions and infinitives. We can stop feeling ashamed that we don’t know what a declension is. We will be much nicer people.

hold  up
грабить; обирать; выставлять, показывать
to hold up a bank — ограбить банк
to hold up to derision — выставлять на посмешище

Oh, a video! Watch it!!!!

The Miguel Cotto v Manny Pacquiao fight this weekend wouldn’t have attracted much attention from TEFLers, linguists or other language orientated professionals. I watched it because I like boxing. But I did notice, during the interview with Cotto after his 11 and a bit rounds of punishment, the use of some pretty old fashioned English…

“I didn’t know from where the punches were coming,” Cotto said.

Which is slightly different from the ‘normal’ way of saying the sentence – “I didn’t know where the punches were coming from.” There’s an old rule in English declaring that it is incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition.  Actually I’ve often wondered whether it ever really was a rule, or just a myth. So I researched. Apparently the ‘rule’ is linked to grammatical structure in Latin, which was considered grammatically perfect. If it was good enough for Latin, it was good enough for English. Except it’s not always natural to use the preposition in the same way in English. Whether that’s always been the case, or whether the evolution of English (and perhaps phrasal verbs) has made it so, I do not know. Although quite often the flexibility of the usage of the Relative Clause does make it perfectly possible.

Winston Churchill once famously responded to a prepositional correction of his notes “This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.” His literal interpretation is quite amusing, but not as amusing as another I found - A Southerner stopped a stranger on the Harvard campus and asked, “Could you please tell me where the library is at?” The stranger responded, “Educated people never end their sentences with a preposition.” The overly polite Southerner then apologetically repeated himself: “Could you please tell me where the library is at, you jerk?”

My students seem to have issues with prepositions. Here in Utah in particular, there is confusion concerning the word “on.”  An example from an email: I have a question on the homework. Does he mean he wrote a question on the homework page itself? No, he means about. From a student essay: He is writing on the affects of our human nature. In addition to the wrong effect, he also has the wrong preposition. Right again folks, it should be “about.” I also get a lot of  “X is based off of Y”–a chance to correctly use “on” not taken.

Prepositions are incredibly hard to teach to non-native English speakers because the rules are almost non-existent; it’s something native speakers grow up with and should know. It’s the same with gendered nouns in latin languages: children never confuse la mesa with el mesa. Only people learning Spanish as a second language make that mistake. In English, apparently, it’s not the same. People use the wrong words their entire lives until they get into my class and then they get mad at me because I tell them their redneck misuse of the language makes them sound like morons. Than is a different word from then. You can’t have “past” someone on the street. “It’s easier to just use one kind of there all the time,” a student told me. “But they’re different words,” I said. “They have completely different meanings.” He shrugged. “People know what I mean.”

These are college students. These are native English speakers. These are the idiots who will run the country in a few years. Based off of these examples, you can see it’s enough to make you have questions on the passed and future of education.

wash (something) down – запивать (еду, лекарство водой, вином и т.п.)

turn into – обращаться, превращаться

burn out – ощущать эмоциональное, физическое и психическое истощение в результате постоянного стресса, испытываемого на работе

It’s curious, but every year I see that different students tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Therefore I’ve created this presentation putting together the mistakes of previous students and the mistakes of this year’s students. If you want to check the other presentations, you can check Frequent Mistakes and Frequent Mistakes 2.

Anyway, read the following presentation and take notes. You can even download it if you want to.

See you soon!

flow out – (фраз. гл.) тратиться в больших количествах (о средствах)

Les dejo esta imagen de Moddou que recopila algunas de las preposiciones más frecuentes:

Y este ejercicio (pulsen en la imagen y luego en el punto 2 exercice):

A continuación, hagan los ejercicios de Languages online:

Exercice 1

Exercice 2

turn out - стать, сделаться; оказаться; выворачивать наружу; вставать (с постели)

Чтобы запомнить: “Она обернулась, и я понял: Она.. оказалась роботом…”

in advance – заблаговременно, заранее

advance
1. сущ.
1) общ. прогресс; улучшение, успех, достижение

stand over – оставаться нерешённым; быть отложенным, отсроченным (фраз. гл.)

stand out – быть заметным, выделяться, выступать

Prepositions combine with nouns flexibly when describing concrete locative relations (e.g. at/on/in the school) but are rigidly prescribed when paired with abstract concepts (e.g. at risk; on Wednesday; in trouble). In the former case they do linguistic work based on their discrete semantic qualities, and in the latter they appear to serve a primarily grammatical function. We used the abstract concept of time as a test case to see if specific grammatically prescribed prepositions retain semantic content. Using ambiguous questions designed to interrogate one’s meaningful representation of temporal relations, we found that the semantics of prescribed prepositions modulate how we think about time. Although prescribed preposition use is unlikely to be based on a core representational organization shared between space and time, results demonstrate that the semantics of particular locative prepositions do constrain how we think about paired temporal concepts.

to talk into – to persuade to by talking – убеждать