Ah—well, yes, the construction is commonly used as a prepositional phrase. I was assuming that your questioner wanted to know what would be considered correct and/or logically desirable by people in the habit of following formal rules (because he asked a professor, who then asked a grammar listerv).

 

I think that the speakers you quote wish to project an image of familiarity (even to the point of folksiness) and not necessarily of formal correctness. The construction “before us” is certainly comprehensible and common. It’s only when you pause to think about it that the illogic becomes apparent. (And, FWIW, “Let’s Thank Those Who Came Before We Did” doesn’t scan prettily.)

 

“Before us” is common and easily understood—and if I were a speechwriter for a politician or a poet trying to tap the heart of the common reader, I might very well choose that option.

 

So it’s pretty much a matter of desired register. For most American readers/listeners, most of the time, one can use “before us” as a prepositional phrase without anyone smarting or flinching. But whether the folks writing the dictionary will include “before us” in the examples of “before” as a preposition or whether a grammar book will get behind the construction is another issue.

 

Best,

Kathryn

 

 

Thanks, Kathryn, for taking time to help me think through this issue. This is the kind of question that astute students often pose, too, so I think it is worth considering. You (and Warriner) have addressed the point I find most interesting in terms of teaching: whether other subordinating conjunctions besides “than” and “as” can have an elided/elliptical verb.

 

But I’m still not convinced that “before” cannot be a preposition in such a construction. My colleague sent a follow-up e-mail adding these thoughts to our discussion of the sentence “The Smiths received their invitation before (us) (we [did])”:

 

Here's something else that I've found:  President Clinton and Governor Joe Manchin III both used the phrase "those who came before us" in their inaugural addresses, and Maya Angelou used the title "Let's Thank Those Who Came before Us."  Doesn't the preposition "before" have the same sense in those phrases as in the sentence we're analyzing?

 

Those examples call into question our assertion that the prepositional phrase “before us” is illogical in reference to time. The prescriptivist in me wants to say that even presidents and famous authors can make mistakes, but the descriptivist in me must admit that both constructions seem defensible.

 

I’m surprised we haven’t heard from anyone else on the issue.

 

Best,

Nancy

 

 

Hi, Nancy,

 

Per Warriner’s grammar and the part-of-speech labels for “before” in Webster’s New World Dictionary, your analysis is correct. It is an incomplete construction with an elided verb (as you say, “before us” would be illogical as a prepositional phrase because “us” isn’t really a time or an event in time). So, according to formal rules and logic, the correct pronoun is “we,” though in common speech, people almost never honor the formal rule when first-person pronouns are involved.

 

Warriner states that an incomplete construction occurs “most commonly” after the words _than_ and _as_, but does not rule out other subordinating conjunctions. It may be that the “rule” your colleague found about only “than” and “as” taking elided verbs is an attempt to remedy awkwardnesses like the one in the sentence in question. So it may be a style dictate rather than a rule of traditional grammar.

 

At any rate, as a point of correctness, I would use “we,” and as a point of style (at least), I would include “did” at the end of the sentence to avoid the awkwardness.

 

Best,

Kathryn

 

 

Happy New Year, listers.

 

A retired colleague and friend called and asked me to weigh in on the following grammar question, which someone had posed to him:

 

In the following sentence, is “before” a preposition, in which case the pronoun should be in the objective case?

 

“The Smiths received their invitation before us.”

 

Or, is “before” a subordinating conjunction launching a clause with an elliptical verb, in which case the pronoun should be in the nominative case?

 

“The Smiths received their invitation before we [did].”

 

My first response was to vote for the latter choice, even though I cannot imagine ever using “we” in that sentence without also saying/writing the verb. Unlike the second clause of the sentence “She is three inches taller than I,” the clause starting with “before” sounds really wrong without the verb plainly in sight (or earshot). We concluded that it probably sounds wrong precisely because “before” can be a preposition or a subordinator, whereas “than” can serve only in the latter role.

 

We debated whether we could really say, though, that one choice was right and one wrong—or even that one choice was better than the other.

 

We also considered the notion that “before,” when used as a preposition, isn’t really logical in front of an object referring to people because it is not logical to speak of time (“sooner than”) in relation to people. That is, “before noon,” “before Tuesday,” and “before next week” all make sense because those objects are all time designations. But is it logical to refer to time by saying “before [person/people]”? (Of course, we can use “before” to mean “in front of,” but that is a different sense completely: “She gave the speech before a crowd of six thousand.”)

 

The next day, my colleague called back to tell me that he did some Web surfing and discovered a number of pages arguing that only “than” and “as” can have an elliptical verb. Is that so? I know that we use those two to point out a common pronoun error associated with their use, but are they the only two?

 

I suppose that a little creative avoidance is in order here! Either of these sentences would avoid the problem:

 

            “The Smiths received their invitation sooner than we did.”

            “The Smiths received their invitation before we did.”

 

I told him that I knew JUST the place to go with this issue, and I will forward your insights to him!

 

Thanks for your thoughts,

 

Nancy

 

Nancy L. Tuten, PhD

Professor of English

Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program

Columbia College

Columbia, South Carolina

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