[Pan-users] Re: OT: English [was Re: Re: freeze, high CPU getting new headers]

[Greg Lee]

On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:35:26 -0700, Joe Zeff wrote:


> Better, of course, would be to say, "Look, lady, in that context, it's
> not a preposition, it's a particle and there's nothing wrong with ending
> a sentence with a particle.  You are right, however, that it's wrong, a
> sentence to end, a preposition with."

It's true that it's perfectly normal for a particle to come at the
end of a sentence, but prepositions can also come there, when their
objects have been moved elsewhere.  Here's an example that is
ambiguous as between preposition and particle: "What did you
look up?"  If the answer is "the telephone number", "up" is taken
to be a particle, but if the answer is "the street", "up" could be
a preposition (though it's still ambiguous).

-- 
Greg