{"id":2159,"date":"2024-09-24T07:25:34","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T11:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=2159"},"modified":"2024-09-24T07:25:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T11:25:34","slug":"pied-piping-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/pied-piping-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Pied piping and style"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find pied-piping in English a bit stilted, even if it is sometimes the prescribed option. Consider the following contrast:<\/p>\n

(1) I’m not someone to fuck with.
\n(2) I’m not someone with whom to fuck.<\/p>\n

In (1) the preposition\u00a0with<\/em> is stranded; in (2) it is raises along with the wh-<\/em>element. What are your impressions of a speaker who says (2)? For me, they sound a bit like a nerd, or perhaps a cartoonish villain.\u00a0I thought about this the other day because I was watching Alien Resurrection\u00a0<\/em>(1997)<\/a>\u2014it’s okay but not one of my favorite entries in the Weyland-Yutani cinematic universe\u2014and one of the first bits of characterization we get for mercenary “Ron Johner”, played by badass Ron Perlman, is the following bit of dialogue (here taken directly from Joss Whedon’s screenplay):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This would work if Johner was a sort of evil genius, or if it was some kind of callback to something earlier, but I think this is probably just unanalyzed language pedantry ruining the vibe a little.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find pied-piping in English a bit stilted, even if it is sometimes the prescribed option. Consider the following contrast: (1) I’m not someone to fuck with. (2) I’m not someone with whom to fuck. In (1) the preposition\u00a0with is stranded; in (2) it is raises along with the wh-element. What are your impressions of … Continue reading “Pied piping and style”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-language","post_format-post-format-aside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2172,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions\/2172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}