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Friday, December 10, 2010

Missing Words: something up with which I shall not put


About the rule “Never end a sentence with a preposition.”, Sir Winston Churchill said “That is something up with which I shall not put.”  His statement is perfectly grammatical and follows the rule, but he said it to demonstrate that idiomatic English just doesn’t follow that rule.  The idiomatic construction would be "That is something I shall not put up with."  “Put” is one of those phrasal verbs whose meaning is given new meaning by the aid of adverbial particles: run at/run to/run into/run through…; get up/get in/get out…; put in/put out/put through/put up with etc.
•••••From that sentence a word has been left out — that.
••••The sentence in question is being placed in the pattern of the definition IV: N+V+N.  The word ‘something’ is standing in relation to the verb ‘is’ as the subjective complement to the subject ‘that’, and equally it is actually the direct object of the preposition ‘with’.
•••••‘Thət’ is being taken as the relative pronoun.  An adjective is a lesser word when it is not one of the key words in the pattern and is not, therefore, stressed.  Unstressed syllables are usually given the vowel schwa ə.  If you read or say a sentence in which the word ‘that’ is pronounced /ŦHət/ or /ðət/, you can be sure that it is an adjective or starting an adjective clause (i.e. a defining relative clause), and it is a relative pronoun, not a subordinate conjunction, a word that joins a subordinate clause to the main clause.
•••••‘That’ would be a subordinate conjunction when the noun clause or adjective clause is a key part of the sentence pattern, and you give its vowel full value /ŦHăt/ or /æt/:

•••••So, what is happening here?  It is clear to everyone that you are right.
‘That you are right’ is actually a noun clause in apposition (or parenthetical) to the subject ‘it’, and it should be set off, for that reason, by a comma and never is.  It is still a noun substitute, but it is in an adjectival function to add detail. It, that you are right, is clear to everyone that you are right.  The inverted order is to supply emphasis to the final words.
•••••When you say this last sentence, drop the pitch of your voice for the parenthetical clause in apposition to show that it is not part of the main clause, that it is added information.  Remember that this construction is considered to be formal, and perhaps pedantic, and the the informal colloquial form is "It is clear to everyone that you are right."

Gowers, Sir Ernest. Fowler's Modern English Usage. Oxford University Press, 1968  473-75, 451-52, 625-30

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