Part 2:
it’s fun, but it’s not the argument you might think it is
What a delightful anecdote, what a delicious quote. (Whoever actually devised it first.) And it seems to put those opposed to trailing prepositions so satisfyingly in their place. Mangle the language so as not to end on a preposition? Never!
But it misses the point. Or rather, it makes the wrong one.
The point of not twisting the syntax of a sentence so as not to end on a preposition should be, most generally, that it’s not necessary. Or at least, that it’s not required by the grammar of the language. Not that it’s ungrammatical to do so.
Though of course, sometimes it is.
In the witticism of this famous anecdote, for example, it is not possible not to end on the preposition. The verb is “to put up with” and it must be expressed in that order. But there are other constructions where you have a choice, where the language supports a double use of the preposition, either trailing or not. And it’s those cases that take us into a discussion of style and register.
Grammar: when you must end on a preposition
There are some constructions where you have no choice: the grammar of the language calls for ending the phrase, clause, or entire sentence on a preposition. Or something that looks like one. To attempt any other position for that word is to mangle the syntax of the sentence.
And for the most part, we never spare these a second glance, using them freely without fear of reprobation.
These constructions involve multiword verbs, verbs of two or three words, like give in, get by, look after, for which the following holds true: the additional words are adverbs or prepositions or both, but the multiword verb takes on a meaning that does not simply equal the meaning of the first word plus the additional word or words. For example, look up, as in “looking upward” is not a multiword verb. It is the verb look plus the adverb up. But look up as in “to search for” or “to seek out” (looking up a word, looking someone up) or “to improve” (as when business is looking up) is. That word combination has now become a separate verb with an entirely new meaning, one you could not predict from the meanings of the individual components. You could not predict from the meanings of look and up, for example, that they would combine to mean to search, to seek, or to improve. Those meanings do not derive from the individual words. Combined, the words have attained a new lexical meaning.
In some contexts, all such verbs are called phrasal verbs. In other contexts, the analysis is more fine-grained and these verbs are called phrasal verbs (when an adverb is added), prepositional verbs (when a preposition is added), or phrasal-prepositional verbs (when an adverb and a preposition are added). The adverbs and prepositions so added are called particles.
When such verbs take objects, either directly or following a preposition, then the die is cast.
Fronting and multiword verbs
When the objects of a multiword verb are “fronted” (moved to the beginning of the sentence), the verb phrase is left behind:
The essays have all been handed in.
Your case will soon be tended to.
Those properties are worth looking into.
He was taken advantage of.
Some of these end words are adverbial particles; some, prepositional particles. In constructions like these, with the objects of the verb fronted, the particles are loosely referred to as “prepositions,” and prepositions split in this way from their objects are said to trail, to be stranded, or to be deferred.
A preposition so deferred may come at the end of the sentence:
She was long sought after.
That’s all she could talk about.
When they first began emigrating to the US, the Irish were looked down upon.
Or it may come at the end of a clause or a phrase within the sentence:
She was sought after by all the leading designers.
All she could talk about was her dog.
The Irish were looked down upon when they first began arriving to this country.
Although these particular prepositions do not appear at the end of the sentence, they are trailing (or stranded or deferred) at the end of a clause or phrase in the same way.
These trailing prepositions are perfectly grammatical. And what’s more, few ever notice them. Despite the contentious chatter about not ending on a preposition, we encounter prepositional endpoints such as these with perfect equanimity.
The varieties of fronting
For those who enjoy grammar puzzles (you know who you are), here’s a little more detail.
Fronting with the change in multiword verbs from active to passive voice
A common form of fronting comes about when a multiword verb of this type is made passive such that the former object of the verb or preposition is now the subject of the verb.
So, in other words, where sentences like this (in active voice):
The students have handed in the essays.
The court will soon be tending to your case.
All the leading designers sought after her.
The bullies took advantage of him.
Become instead this (in passive voice):
The essays have all been handed in.
Your case will soon be tended to.
She was sought after.
He was taken advantage of.
Whether or not something else follows that passive verb phrase with its deferred preposition, the preposition remains deferred: its object has been decoupled and moved in front of it in the sentence.
Fronting with verbal constructions of multiword verbs
There are other circumstances for fronting as well. As with other English verbs, multiword verbs can function as verbals: words with the form and some of the characteristics of verbs, but that function as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.
The verbal may contain its object:
It’s impossible to work with him.
I find it impossible to work with him.
It’s worth listening to them.
Caring for her is difficult.
It’s worth looking into those properties.
Or the object may be split out of its phrase and fronted:
He’s impossible to work with.
They’re worth listening to.
She’s difficult to care for.
Those properties are worth looking into.
As with the fronting involved in the change from active to passive voice, a former object of the preposition is moved into the subject slot. But there is no change of voice here. Indeed, there is no grammatical voice at all. (Grammatical voice applies only to transitive verbs. Linking verbs have no “voice.”) The change here is one purely of shifting the focus onto a different subject, also known as the theme of the sentence. And so this sort of fronting is called thematization.
Fronting with other constructions involving multiword verbs
There are other constructions in English that shift the object of the verb to a position preceding the verb, such as cleft sentences (also known as it-clefts), pseudo-cleft sentences (also known as what-clefts), and straightforward fronting for emphasis.
With a sentence like this, for example:
Those people were involved in a dangerous accident.
You can do this, using a cleft construction:
It was a dangerous accident that those people were involved in.
Or this, using a pseudo-cleft construction:
What a dangerous accident those people were involved in.
Either of those more emphatic constructions leaves the preposition to trail.
With a sentence like this:
I cannot put up with his callousness.
You can do this, using a cleft construction:
It’s his callousness that I cannot put up with.
Or this, using fronting for emphasis:
His callousness is something I cannot put up with.
Again, as with any construction that splits out the object of a multiword verb and shifts its position in the sentence, the preposition will trail.
Fronting in these constructions involves only the object of the preposition
Multiword verbs have complex behavior and analyzing them can also quickly become complex. Some of them, for example, allow the particle to separate from the lexical verb.
Like this:
She brought up the girls.
She brought the girls up.
We turned on the light.
We turned the light on.
In fact, with these verbs, when a pronoun is used, it must precede the particle:
She brought them up.
We turned it on.
Other multiword verbs do not allow for such movement. The verb phrase often cannot be broken.
For example:
He called on the new neighbors.
* He called the new neighbors on.
* He called them on.
I don’t care for cilantro.
* I don’t care cilantro for.
* I don’t care it for.
This difference of behavior has to do with the nature of the particle.
In neither category, though, can the verb phrase be split and the particle(s) fronted:
* Out he passed.
* Down the car broke.
* For cilantro I don’t care.
That is, the objects of the verb phrase can be fronted. Portions of the verb phrase itself cannot.
All of which brings us back to “up with which I will not put.”
You can (grammatically) say this:
I will not put up with such utter poppycock
And you can (grammatically) say this:
This utter poppycock I will not put up with.
Or this:
This is utter poppycock, which I will not put up with.
That is, with the object of the preposition following the preposition or with that object fronted for emphasis.
But you cannot (grammatically) say this:
This is utter poppycock, with which I will not put up.
This is utter poppycock, up with which I will not put.
Because portions of the verb phrase cannot be split off and fronted.
Style: when you have a choice about whether or not to end on a preposition
So what about the hue and cry over not ending on a preposition? All of that centers on two constructions, wh questions and relative clauses, when the word at the start of the clause is also the object of a preposition. The object can be split off from the related preposition, leaving the preposition to trail, or the preposition can be tucked up at the start of the clause, with its object. The former approach is generally considered more informal; the latter, formal.
However, some have internalized these two options not as formal and informal, but as right and wrong.
“wh” questions
In questions with interrogative adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns (wh questions), when the interrogative falls inside a prepositional phrase, there are usually two choices for how to express the question: with the preposition as the first word or with it as the last word.
It’s more common in speech for the preposition to come as the last word:
Who are you waiting for?
Who should I direct my questions to?
Where are you coming from?
Which store did you find it in?
These are entirely natural — and grammatical — questions.
In a more formal context, you might choose instead to express them this way:
For whom are you waiting?
To whom should I direct my questions?
From where are you coming?
In which store did you find it?
Some questions do not translate well to the formal register.
This, for example, sounds perfectly fine:
What are you waiting for?
And it might be said to urge someone to action.
It loses something in the translation to a more formal register:
For what are you waiting?
Though that might be remedied in other, playful ways.
As with, for example:
For what godforsaken dash of encouragement are you waiting?
relative clauses
The same words that serve to introduce the sorts of questions that elicit information (rather than a simple yes or no) serve also to introduce relative clauses. And so, as you might expect, when the relative word is the object of a preposition, just as there are two ways to array that prepositional phrase in the question, there are two ways to array that prepositional phrase in these clauses.
With the preposition at the end of the clause:
That’s the chair [that]she was sitting in.
She likes the people [that] she lives with.
Let me show you the journal [that] his article was published in.
Is that the company [that] he worked for?
That’s one of the organizations [that] I wrote for.
Or with the preposition tucked up inside the clause next to its object:
That’s the chair in which she was sitting.
She likes the people with whom she lives.
Let me show you the journal in which his article was published.
Is that the company for which he worked?
That’s one of the organizations for which I wrote.
We tend to use the former in speech. The latter comes into play in writing, most particularly with longer and more complex structures. And of course, most particularly too with writing in more formal registers.
Note that the end of the clause does not always coincide with the end of the sentence:
The town [that] she’s traveling to is in the midwest.
The grand old house [that] I was telling you about is currently unoccupied.
The song [that] I was referring to is on the other CD.
Most people won’t notice trailing prepositions that appear midsentence — though these are the selfsame structures as those that sometimes close out a sentence.
These midsentence clauses can also be rephrased to couple preposition with object:
The town to which she’s traveling is in the midwest.
The grand old house about which I was telling you is currently unoccupied.
The song to which I was referring is on the other CD.
Such simple constructions can often seem awkward when rephrased to this more formal style, most particularly with examples such as these, made up for the purposes of illustration.
Rhythm and balance, clarity and emphasis
In sentences that are lengthier and more complex than those simple examples, we often do tuck the preposition up by the relative word:
Because [stories] contain characters to whom things happen and who react to those events, people can identify with the characters and enter into the story.
Music and stories are two forms of art that require no technology, in which the audience can include more than the creator, and for which memory (and skill acquisition) are sufficient to record enough of the experience to allow its repeated performance and hence improvement.
They sold themselves as the party of God and country, offering comfort to people who wouldn’t need comforting if the Bush administration had not created the very problems for which it then offered spiritual refuge.
And that style can not only work fine, it can often be preferable — but not because it is more “grammatical.” In longer sentences with a particular kind of rhythm, one advantage of a shift like this is the heightened focus placed on the endpoint. The natural end focus of the endpoint can be aligned with what in the sentence is significant.
Consider that last sentence again, as actually written:
They sold themselves as the party of God and country, offering comfort to people who wouldn’t need comforting if the Bush administration had not created the very problems for which it then offered spiritual refuge.
Now consider it rephrased instead with a trailing preposition:
They sold themselves as the party of God and country, offering comfort to people who wouldn’t need comforting if the Bush administration had not created the very problems that it then offered spiritual refuge for.
The ending of the sentence in this rephrased version is not as tidy. It’s not as powerful. It’s perfectly grammatical. It’s just not as effective.
Or consider this sentence:
[Women at the Thesmophoria] is the only sustained parody in Aristophanes for which we possess the original intact and can study the technique of parody in detail.
In this case, the “for which” enables that compound predicate “we possess . . . and can study” to follow, as the prepositional phrase applies to and governs both verbs of the compound. Phrasing these two instead with trailing prepositions would undo the compound.
On the other hand, there are many cases where the trailing form better suits. The phrasing in the second of these two lines, for example, fits perfectly:
Hey, Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
This version hasn’t at all the right tone or feel:
Hey, Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place to which I’m going
Placing the preposition in relative constructions such as these is a matter of balance. Sometimes clarity dictates the use of one form (trailing or not) over another. Sometimes some other matter of style — tone, parallelism, emphasis — comes into play.
The point is, the language supports both forms. Both are fully grammatical. The choice between the two comes down to other matters.
Distinction between the two circumstances
The difference between fronting with multiword structures and the shifting that can occur in wh questions and relative clauses is a difference in what moves and what stays put.
With the fronting, only the object moves. The preposition remains in place, as part of the verb phrase, and so it now trails. And that is grammatical. (Fronting it would not be.)
With wh questions and relative clauses, by contrast, only the preposition moves. It doesn’t need to move. It can remain trailing, or it can be shifted to precede the object. Either is grammatical. The object, however, stays put.
In both cases, what moves moves only optionally. And what doesn’t move, mustn’t.