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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