Preposition use is one of those areas of great irregularity in English, especially in Standard English. In sentence adjuncts, for example as adverbial phrases, they're not so bad, but when they are governed by verbs, nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, they are simply irregular. For ESL students, prepositions, auxiliaries and articles are the three great areas of mystery, and for native speakers, prepositions remain this. As native speakers they've mastered article use and auxiliary use, which varies only stilghtly from dialect to dialect, most of their rules and conditions being grammatically and pragmatically governed. Prepositions, on the other hand, are simply irregular. Non-standard dialects will tend to regularize some of this as a matter of course, as, for example, children learn their native non-standard dialect. But unless you grow up with the Standard, you have to learn those irregularities in school, and they provide one of the sets of shibboleths by which we judge whether a person is competent in Standard English or not. I think they have to be taught piecemeal. I don't think there are consistent semantic reasons for the distribution of prepositions in Standard English, especially those that are lexically governed. And of course irregularity is a ripe area for analogical change.
Herb
________________________________
Paul,
I have noticed similar errors in native speakers of English. I don't think
it's a dialect thing, but I should ask the students. I have assumed it's
carelessness and a function of being new at writing. It seems that beginner
writing students construct sentences that they would never say and wouldn't
be able to understand if someone else said or wrote them.
--
Christine Reintjes Martin
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>From: "PAUL E. DONIGER" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: preposition changes?
>Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 07:54:31 -0800
>
>Dear ATEGers,
>
>A few English teachers in my school, including myself, have been noticing
>what seems to be a new phenomenon. I'm wondering if it is localized in my
>region, state, or district, or if this is more universal. Our students seem
>to have trouble using "correct" prepositions. For example, I'm finding
>sentences like this:
>
>"We know he had no intentions ON doing what he did and now regrets
>everything that happened."
>
>This sort of misuse of a preposition is becoming a regular occurrence in
>the papers I'm seeing. The students who write them are NOT ELL students,
>but grew up in average middle-class American homes where English is the
>first language. Is anyone else out there finding this to be an issue?
>
>Also, does anyone have any good lesson ideas for raising awareness and
>correcting the error?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Paul E. Doniger
>
>
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