Wednesday December 21, 2005
Watch the prepositions
By RALPH BERRY
I begin to think that the preposition is the most difficult part of modern English.
How can this be? There aren’t many prepositions — I suppose, around 30 or 40 in common use. We know them all: under, to, by, from and the rest.
So where’s the problem?
It comes when prepositions link up with a verb. This practice is held to enrich the language.
Thus take off (“remove”, but also “imitate”, “become airborne”), take on (“accept a challenge”, “engage an employee”, “acquire”, as in “take on a new meaning”), and take in (“deceive”, “understand”, “admit” [of a lodger], “visit” [a place as part of a journey].)”
A simple verb, take, adds enormously to its power by linking up with a preposition. The humble preposition too gains power. These added meanings seem to have little to do with each other. For example, pass out can mean “faint”, or “complete one’s military training”.
You just have to know from the context which meaning is intended (though you can joke about the “passing-out parade” when somebody faints).
Grammarians call this verb-preposition pairing a phrasal verb.
It’s nothing new in itself. The great Dr Johnson first noted the type in the Preface to his Dictionary (1755). He thought it most puzzling to those learning the English language, and found the type to be “wildly irregular”.
But it was clearly a tide coming in. And here we are, two and a half centuries later, wondering what we can do to stem the tide.
For the preposition continues to link arms with verbs, and thus to march forward together while overpowering all resistance.
Most of us blame the Americans. They stand as so often in the dock, this time charged with flooding the language with barbarous new phrasal verbs. But the fact is that the British (again, as so often) are enthralled by American usage, and after a decent period of protest quietly submit. You can find your own examples of the pattern.
Some leading cases I’ve touched on before. Meet with is now widely accepted in the UK media. I would defend it as meaning an arranged meeting, rather than a chance encounter (meet).
Lose out, miss out are useless but popular. Thus (The Times), “Then he learnt that he had missed out to Christine Channon.” Why couldn’t he have lost to Christine?
Dumb down (to make suitable for an audience of low intelligence) is moving from colloquial to a standard term. Other cases are open to challenge. I name my prime suspect: UP.
(1) “It’s time for the police to tech up.” (BBC-TV) Can you see why so many of us hold in contempt the standards of the BBC?
(2) “It’s necessary for the Department to staff up.” (The Times) Easier than saying “increase their number of staff”, I suppose.
(3) “Democrats looked just as eager to suit up and meet them on the battlefield.” (The Times) I just don’t know what this means. Put on suits, like armour? Suit, or meet the challenge of the Republicans?
4) “Free up”. This is now general, and I fear cannot be stopped. What is even better than freedom? Freedom in an upward direction, of course. But what is freed up is not about to fan out across the countryside, like Spartacus’s followers. The resources involved (or “money,” as we used to say) are diverted to other spending projects. This one is a great favourite of governments.
And that gives us the clue to the popularity of up. The word suggests progress, optimism, achievement, high and higher standards, onwards and upwards.
Up claims a good outcome for whatever the verb proposes. Even so, the preposition is without useful meaning. It is a mere garnish at the side of the plate.
Another issue is the tendency to add prepositions.
I have just read about Iraq, which the British military “are planning to pull out of in May.” Three in a row is too many for me. But Stephen Fry cites a sentence that raises the bar to seven.
He imagines a child who asks her mother to find a book with a bedtime story. Mother goes downstairs, and returns with a book on Australia. The child cannot understand such a monstrous choice. “Mother, what on earth did you bring a book to read out of about Down Under up for?”
That’s cheating, I know. “Down Under”, meaning Australia, is really a noun here.
That still leaves us with five prepositions clustered menacingly round a single noun.
This is a warning of things getting out of hand. The new phrasal verbs take on an American flavour. As used outside the US — the country that gave us off of — they hint at an admiration for American speechways.
I’d say that prepositions are getting above themselves, and need to be watched. To adapt a famous cry, “The influence of the preposition has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”
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