As to "She asked me did I have the book", I don't believe anyone should
object to this in speech. As to written English, it is probably still
too informal to be safe to write.

As to the preposition changes, I have noticed this quite a lot in my
students' speech and writing, and even have trouble myself sometimes.

Once again we need to think about why we are bugged by things, whether
we should be bugged by things, and how best to go about dealing with
such things. The preposition business is a great example. As Herb points
out, preposition use with particular verbs is highly irregular in
English and needs to be memorized. It is also therefore more subject to
change than more regular usages, like article usage.

How do people learn the standard preposition uses? Is it by memorizing
them in school? I feel that most kinds of memorizing for native speakers
is stultifying and probably useless. People internalize irregularities
by exposure. As with so many other things that are different in our
students' language, I chalk this one up to the fact that KIDS DON'T READ
ENOUGH ACADEMIC ENGLISH. Reading millions of words entrenches
collocations (frequent pairings of one word with another word or
phrase).  I believe we must once again realize that most of us who are
great at standard grammar are great because we read and wrote so much in
our school years. I continue to believe that explicit teaching of any
kind of language facts is not the primary way people nativize such facts.

Thus I would not recommend that we start making lists of verb-prep.
pairs and making students memorize them. It's another band-aid solution
for the real problem: not enough serious academic reading/writing K-12.
I suppose it might be stopgap for older kids for whom it will take years
to catch up with the amount of reading needed to nativize formal
standard English. I certainly believe it would be wasteful to make such
lists for native speakers in the lower grades. For them, READING and
writing should be the primary tool for learning standard English.


***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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