Preposition stranding orp-stranding is thesyntactic construction in which a so-calledstranded,hanging, ordanglingpreposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its correspondingobject; for example, at the end of a sentence. The termpreposition stranding was coined in 1964, predated bystranded preposition in 1949.^[1][2] Linguists had previously identified such a construction as asentence-terminal preposition^[3] or as apreposition at the end.^[4]

Preposition stranding is found in English and otherGermanic languages,^[5][6][7][8] as well as in Vata and Gbadi (languages in theNiger–Congo family), and certain dialects ofFrench spoken in North America.^{[citation needed]}

P-stranding occurs in various syntactic contexts, includingpassive voice,^[9]wh-movement,^[10][11] andsluicing.^[10][11]

Wh-movement—which involveswh-words likewho,what,when,where,why andhow—is a syntactic dependency between a sentence-initialwh-word and the gap that it is associated with.Wh-movement can lead to P-stranding if the object of the preposition is moved to sentence-initial position, and the preposition is left behind. P-stranding fromwh-movement is observed in English and Scandinavian languages. The more common alternative is calledpied piping, a rule that prohibits separating a preposition from its object, for instances in Serbo-Croatian and Arabic languages. English and Dutch useboth rules, providing the option of two constructions in these situations.

An open interrogative often takes the form of awh- question (beginning with a word likewhat orwho).

P-stranding in English allows the separation of the preposition from its object, while pied piping allows carrying the preposition along with thewh- object.^[11] From the examples below, we can see the two options.

• Which town did you comefrom?^[11]
  • From which town did you come?

• 

  What are you talkingabout?^[a]
  • About what are you talking?

P-stranding in Danish is banned only if thewh-word is referring to nominative cases.^[12] "Peter has spoken with <whom>", thewh-word <whom> is the accusative case. Therefore, p-stranding is allowed.

• Directional constructions

• R-pronouns

• Standard French requires
  • Pour qui est-ce que tu as fait le gâteau?
  • For whom did you bake the cake?
• Some dialects, such as Prince Edward Island French, permit^[13]

Wh-movement in Greek states that the extracted PP must be in Spec-CP,^[14] which means the PP (me) needs to move with thewh-word (Pjon). It can thus be seen that Greek allowspied piping in wh-movement but not prepositional stranding.

Pied-piping is the only grammatical option in Spanish to construct oblique relative clauses.^[15] Since pied-piping is the opposite of p-stranding, p-stranding in Spanish is not possible (* indicates ungrammaticality).

P-stranding in EA is possible only by using which-NPs that strand prepositions and follow them with IP-deletion.

The preposition (fi) should be moved together with thewh-word (ʔaj) to make this sentence grammatical.^[11]

It should be:

P-stranding in wh-movement sentences is normally banned in LA. However, a recent study found that a preposition seems to be stranded in a resumptivewh-question.^[16]

Sluicing is a specific type of ellipsis that involveswh-phrases. In sluicing, thewh-phrase is stranded while the sentential portion of the constituent question is deleted. It is important to note that the preposition is stranded inside the constituent questions before sluicing. Some languages allow prepositional stranding under sluicing, while other languages ban it.^[10][11] The theory of preposition stranding generalization (PSG) suggests that if a language allows preposition stranding underwh-movement, that language will also allow preposition stranding under sluicing.^[17] PSG is not obeyed universally; examples of the banning of p-stranding under sluicing are provided below.

Prepositional stranding under sluicing is allowed in English because prepositional phrases are not islands in English.^[18]

• John laughed at someone, but I don't know whohe laughed at.^[10]

A number of common Dutch adpositions can be used either prepositionally or postpositionally, with a slight change in possible meanings. For example, Dutchin can mean eitherin orinto when used prepositionally, but only meaninto when used postpositionally. When postpositions, such adpositions can be stranded:

• short-distance movement:

• Another way to analyze examples like the one above would be to allow arbitrary "postposition + verb" sequences to act as transitiveseparable prefix verbs (e.g.in+lopen →inlopen), but such an analysis would not be consistent with the position ofin in the second example. (The postposition can also appear in the verbal prefix position:[...]dat hij zo'n donker bos niet durft in te lopen[...].)

Pseudopassives (prepositional passives or passive constructions) are the result of the movement of the object of a preposition to fill an empty subject position for apassive verb. The phenomenon is comparable to regular passives, which are formed through the movement of the object of the verb to subject position. In prepositional passives, unlike inwh-movement, the object of the preposition is not awh-word but rather a pronoun or noun phrase:

• This bed looks as ifit has been sleptin.^[a][19]

• Some dialects permit proposition-stranding.
  • Robert a été parlé beaucoupde au meeting.
  • 'Robert was much talkedabout at the meeting.'
• Standard French bans it.
  • On a beaucoup parléde Robert au meeting.

Relative clauses in English can exhibit preposition stranding with or without an explicit relative pronoun:

• This isthe bookthat I told youabout.^[a]
• This isthe book I told youabout.

To standard French ears, all of those constructions sound quite alien and are thus considered barbarisms oranglicismes.

However, not all dialects of French allow preposition stranding to the same extent. For instance,Ontario French restricts preposition stranding to relative clauses with certain prepositions. In most dialects, stranding is impossible with the prepositionsà 'to' andde 'of'.

A superficially-similar construction is possible in standard French in cases where the object is not moved but implied, such asJe suis pour 'I'm all for (it)' orIl faudra agir selon 'We'll have to act according to (the situation)'.

• Some dialects permit
  • Tu connais pas la fille que je te parlede.
  • 'You don't know the girl that I'm talking to youabout.'
• Standard French requires
  • Tu ne connais pas la filledont je te parle.
• Another more widespread non-standard variant is
  • Tu ne connais pas la filleque je te parle.

Dutch prepositions generally do not take the ordinary neuter pronouns (het,dat,wat, etc.) as objects. Instead, they become postpositional suffixes for the correspondingr-pronouns (er,daar,waar, etc.): hence, not *over het ('about it'), buterover (literally 'thereabout'). However, ther-pronouns can sometimes be moved to the left and thereby strand the postposition:^[20]

Some regional varieties ofGerman show a similar phenomenon to some Dutch constructions withda(r)- andwo(r)- forms. That is called asplit construction (Spaltkonstruktion). Standard German provides composite words for the particle and the bound preposition. The split occurs easily with a composite interrogative word (as shown in the English example) or with a composite demonstrative word (as shown in the Dutch example).

For example, the demonstrativedavon ('of that / of those / thereof'):

• Standard German requires

• Some dialects permit

Again, although the stranded postposition has nearly the same surface distribution as a separable verbal prefix (herbekommen is a valid composite verb), it would not be possible to analyze these Dutch and German examples in terms of the reanalyzed verbs *overpraten and *vonkaufen, for the following reasons:

• The stranding construction is possible with prepositions that never appear as separable verbal prefixes (e.g., Dutchvan, Germanvon).
• Stranding is not possible with any kind of object besides anr-pronoun.
• Prefixed verbs are stressed on the prefix; in the stringvon kaufen in the above sentences, the preposition cannot be accented.
  • Also, pronunciation allows distinguishing an actual usage of a verb likeherbekommen from a split constructionher bekommen.

Although preposition stranding has been found in English since the earliest times,^[21] it has often been the subject of controversy, and some usage advisors have attempted to form a prescriptive rule against it. In 1926,H. W. Fowler noted: "It is a cherished superstition that prepositions must, in spite of the incurable English instinct for putting them late [...] be kept true to their name & placed before the word they govern."^[22]

The earliest attested disparagement of preposition stranding in English is datable to the 17th-century grammarian Joshua Poole,^[3] but it became popular after 1672, when the poetJohn Dryden objected toBen Jonson's 1611 phrase "the bodies that those souls were frighted from". Dryden did not explain why he thought the sentence should be restructured to front the preposition.^[23][24] In his earlier writing, Dryden himself had employed terminal prepositions but he systematically removed them in later editions of his work, explaining that when in doubt he would translate his English into Latin to test its elegance.^[4] Latin has no construction comparable to preposition stranding.

Usage writerRobert Lowth wrote in his 1762 textbookA Short Introduction to English Grammar that the construction was more suitable for informal than for formal English: "This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style."^[25] However Lowth used the construction himself, including a humorously self-referential example in this passage ("is strongly inclined to"), and his comments do not amount to a proscription.

A stronger view was taken byEdward Gibbon, who not only disparaged sentence-terminal prepositions but, noting that prepositions and adverbs are often difficult to distinguish, also avoidedphrasal verbs which puton, over orunder at the end of the sentence, even when these are clearly adverbs.^[4][b] By the 19th century, the tradition of English school teaching had come to deprecate the construction, and the proscription is still taught in some schools at the beginning of the 21st century.^[26]

However, there were also voices which took an opposite view. Fowler dedicated four columns of hisDictionary of Modern English Usage to a rebuttal of the prescription:

The fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by English in putting its prepositions late & omitting its relatives is an important element in the flexibility of the language. [...]That depends on what they are cut with is not improved by conversion intoThat depends on with what they are cut; & too often the lust of sophistication, once blooded, becomes uncontrollable, & ends with,That depends on the answer to the question as to with what they are cut.

^[4]

Criticizing the controversy over preposition stranding, American linguistDonald Ringe stated:

The original reason for the objection, apparently, was that Latin has no such construction (or, with a bit more sophistication, that few other languages have such a construction). In other words, people who objected to preposition stranding were insisting that English grammar should be like Latin. That's perverse - English isn't Latin and isn't even descended from Latin...

^[27]

Overzealous avoidance of stranded prepositions was sometimes ridiculed for leading to unnatural-sounding sentences, including the quip apocryphally attributed toWinston Churchill:This is the sort of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put.^[28]

Today, most sources consider it to be acceptable in standard formal English.^[26][29][30] As O'Conner and Kellerman point out: "Great literature from Chaucer to Milton to Shakespeare to the King James version of the Bible was full of so called terminal prepositions."^[29]Mignon Fogarty ("Grammar Girl") says, "nearly all grammarians agree that it's fine to end sentences with prepositions, at least in some cases."^[31]

• Cutts, Martin (2009).Oxford Guide to Plain English (Third ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-955850-6.
• O'Conner, Patricia T.; Kellerman, Stewart (2009).Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. New York: Random House.ISBN 978-0-8129-7810-0.

• Dangling modifier

• An Internet pilgrim's guide to stranded prepositions
• Haegeman, Liliane, and Jacqueline Guéron. 1999.English Grammar: a Generative Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN 0-631-18839-8.
• Hornstein, Norbert, and Amy Weinberg. 1981. "Case theory and preposition stranding."Linguistic Inquiry 12:55–91.Hornstein, N.; Weinberg, A. (1 January 1981). "Case Theory and Preposition Stranding".Linguistic Inquiry.12 (1):55–91.ISSN 0024-3892.JSTOR 4178205.
• Koopman, Hilda. 2000. "Prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions, and particles." InThe Syntax of Specifiers and Heads, pp. 204–260. London: Routledge.ISBN 0-415-16183-5.
• Lundin, Leigh (2007-09-23)."The Power of Prepositions".On Writing. Cairo: Criminal Brief.
• Takami, Ken-ichi. 1992.Preposition Stranding: From Syntactic to Functional Analyses. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.ISBN 3-11-013376-8.
• van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1978.A Case Study in Syntactic Markedness: The Binding Nature of Prepositional Phrases. Dordrecht: Foris.ISBN 90-316-0160-8.
• Fowler, Henry. 1926. "Preposition at end." A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wordsworth Edition reprint, 1994,ISBN 1-85326-318-4

• Parts of speech
• Word order
• English usage controversies
• Syntactic transformation
• Prepositions

• CS1 Danish-language sources (da)
• CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2021
• Articles containing French-language text
• Articles containing Greek-language text
• Articles containing Gulf Arabic-language text
• Articles containing Dutch-language text
• Articles containing German-language text