I wonder if the rich and varied preposition usage lf Present Day English isn't simply a historical phase, just as rich vocabulary was in Early Modern English.  Just look at Shakespeare's vast vocabulary compared to that of most other, especially more recent, writers.  Growth in preposition words is a feature of Late Middle and Early Modern English, which means that it's heavily Southeastern British English, since that's where most of PDE comes from.  Other dialects, which have also influenced American English, have different usages.  And "off of" is a curious reflection of Old and Middle English, where the two were simply different spellings of the same word, which meant "from".  There's room for a dissertation or two on this subject.  I had a student start working on one, with a nice design, a few years ago, and then she simply disappeared from the program.  I never did find out what happened.

Herb


 
I certainly have noticed a sharp increase in weird preposition usage  
in my student papers. To wit:

"a lot of emphasis in the exercises _of_ this package ...  
" (referring to a set of  language-arts teaching materials)
"The Open Court package is very lenient _for_ letting students spell  
incorrectly."

I'm sure I'll find more examples while grading my term papers over  
the next couple of days.

I've also noticed that "based on" is phrased "based off of" by many  
of my students. I also get "build off of" instead of "build on". This  
could be local dialect.

I agree that the preposition weirdness comes from reduced reading of  
academic-level material and reduced writing. I don't think it has  
much to do with text-messaging, though. When people TM, they are in  
their comfort zone of informal, spoken language, with the attendant  
abbreviations and telegraphic syntax (which, by the way, is perfectly  
fine -- for text-messaging. We wouldn't expect a recipe to be written  
in full prose, would we? And we accept virtual pidgin in headlines.)

Preposition use in language is always challenging because preposition  
meanings are often quite vague (what exactly does "at" mean?), and  
because they are so polysemous -- they have so many meanings. A lamp  
hangs _over_ a table, a cow jumps _over_ the moon, Grandma lives  
_over_ there, move _over_!, hey, look me _over_, go _over_ this  
problem for me, it's all _over_ now, they were arguing _over_ the  
household budget, we are _over_ the limit, let's talk/think this  
_over_  ...

Which preposition goes with which verb or adjective is highly  
idiomatic, as, often, several prepositions could be appropriate.  
"Relates to" or "relates with"? "Corresponds to" or "corresponds  
with"?  Why is "filling out" a form the same as "filling in" a form?  
Why can we say "the lights were out" and "the lights were off" but  
only "the lights were on", not "the lights were in"? When the TV goes  
off, it stops, but when a gun goes off, watch _out_!

The meaning differences between verb-preposition collocations are  
subtle: look at, look to, look for, look over, look up to, look down  
on, look in on, look up (in a dictionary). When it comes to  
prepositions, look out!! It's easy to get in trouble.

Informality is also a factor. My students most typically write "first  
off" instead of "first" or "firstly". It sounds like they're scolding  
the reader.

Another factor is that my students do not seem to have had teachers  
who graded their writing very rigorously. Many of them write as they  
would speak. Yet, they know academic writing is supposed to be  
"special" or "fancy", and they have great difficulty trying to hit  
that target. The result is pretty uncomfortable to read. I had one  
student (an English major -- English majors seem especially prone to  
the "It has to sound fancy" myth) who wrote an essay for me in the  
typical Martian (as a colleague calls it). I advised him to just  
write in plain language, in his own voice. His next essay was fine  
college prose, much less wordy, with words that hit the target  
instead of being "big" but inaccurate.

They experience a wide range of standards from their college  
professors, and my grading is often a rude shock. Grammar is not much  
more popular among college writing teachers than it is in the K-12  
schools.

I have also begun to notice certain words that are being both  
overused (if I have to read "aspect" one more time, I'll puke;  
"within" sounds so much fancier than "in"!!) and incorrectly used.  
For my students, everything is a "process", whether it is a skill, a  
state, a method, or something else. Everything is also "prevalent",  
whether the meaning of the word fits or not (for example, "phonics  
lessons are prevalent in this language arts package"). "Relate" is a  
mess. My students often use it without "to". When they quote an  
author, they often use the word "mention" instead of "state", "say",  
or "write".  "Depict" is used strangely. Too many students think the  
thesaurus is their friend. It is a false friend: the subtle  
differences among synonyms are not explicated. They want to use  
varied vocabulary, so they just reach in and pull out a random word.

As a linguist, I'm well aware that word meanings change from one  
generation to the next. I've pretty much accepted that "infer" now  
means both "infer" and "imply", and soon we will have to give up on  
"fewer" in favor of "less". "Based off of" is really quite adequate  
as a synonym for "based on" (compare "knock-off", as in "a copy of",  
"an imitation of"). But the -- shall we say -- prevalence of off- 
target word use is a problem. Or at least it will remain a problem  
until the current authorities (like me) die _off_.

I have come up with a little trick to help students remedy wordiness  
in their writing. "Be suspicious of any word of four letters or fewer  
(oops, I mean 'less')". I have cut many a sentence down to half of  
its original words by finding ways to rephrase the sentence without  
the small words. Here are two examples:


WORDY: "The goal of the article was to explain how different features  
of sound in the initial consonant of a word can connote different  
meanings."   (24 words)
LESS WORDY:  "The article explained how different features of a  
word's initial consonant can connote different meanings."   (15 words  
= 9 words eliminated)

WORDY: "We came to the realization that our decision to have the  
meetings of our club on Saturday mornings was a bad one."
LESS WORDY: "We realized that having club meetings on Saturday  
mornings was a bad decision."
EVEN LESS WORDY: "Our club realized that Saturday-morning meetings  
were unworkable."

WORDY:  'If I were to consider a position that would entail some type  
of communication in the aviation field ... "  (18 words)
LESS WORDY: 'If I were to consider a position in the aviation field   
that entailed some type of communication ... " (12 words)

That last one would even better as "If I were to consider a  
communication-oriented position in aviation ... "

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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