Journal article

Preposition stranding with wh-relatives: A historical survey

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Publication Details

Author list: Bergh, Gunnar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Publication year: 2000

Start page: 295

End page: 316

Number of pages: 22

ISSN: 1360-6743

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1360674300000265


Abstract

In the course of their history, English wh-relatives are known to have undergone a syntactic change in their prepositional usage: having originally occurred only with pied-piped prepositions, they came to admit preposition stranding as an alternative pattern. The present article presents an overview of this process, showing a modest beginning of stranding in Late Middle English, an increase in Early Modern English, and then a clear decrease in the written language of today, against a more liberal use in spoken English, standard as well as nonstandard. The drop in the incidence of stranding is thus not an expression of a genuine grammatical change but due to notions of correctness derived from the grammar of Latin and affecting written usage. The general trend of the development outlined is mirrored by relative that, with which the pied piping attested in Middle English completely disappeared from the language.


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Last updated on 2017-06-10 at 00:50