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https://linguisticsgirl.com/prepositional-complement-english-grammar/

gives these examples for PPs accepting another PP as complement:

  • My mother thought about under the bed.
  • She is worrying about in the morning.
  • The maid gawked at behind the refrigerator.

Only the last one, and maybe the first one, seem acceptable to me.

In general, how acceptable are these kinds of constructions in English? Do any situations exist where it might be totally impermissible? And do any grammatical contexts exist where it is very idiomatic?

minseong
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2 Answers2

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In general, how acceptable are these kinds of constructions in English?

Prepositions usually take nominal phrases (I include nouns, nominal clauses, etc. in that term) as objects, but some guides accept that other constituents (PPs, adverbs, etc.) can also serve in that role. It depends to a great extent on how strict (prescriptivist) you'd like to be. For example, Greenbaum allows "prepositional phrase as complement" (of a preposition), providing this example:

That means he took one lamb burger out of there from under the grill.1

Do any situations exist where it might be totally impermissible?

If you're a totalitarian prescriptivist on this issue, then it's totally impermissible in all situations. Otherwise, I don't know of any such situations.

And do any grammatical contexts exist where it is very idiomatic?

Yes! In addition to Greenbaum's example, there are sentences such as:

I've lived here for over twenty years.
I'll save the cake for after dinner.

1 Sydney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), section 5.47.

MarcInManhattan
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  • Those are all prepositional phrases and do not reflect the kinds of utterances given by the OP. The issue are the phrasal verbs followed by a prepositional phrase. – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 19:28
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    @Lambie OP specifically asks about "PPs accepting another PP as complement", not about phrasal verbs. I don't think that the utterances OP gives include any phrasal verbs, but I admit that it's somewhat hard to tell because I don't find those utterances idiomatic. – MarcInManhattan Dec 13 '22 at 19:31
  • Well, they are idiomatic. For example: "Where do you think he put them? Answer: "I was thinking about under the bed." Normally, we'd say: I was thinking about the garden, or the attic. But if the place is "under the bed", that works too. – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 19:54
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    I'm struggling to see 'over' in 'over twenty years' (ie '>[20 y]') as a preposition. A numeral modifier? – Edwin Ashworth Dec 13 '22 at 19:58
  • @Lambie Yes, I see now that the first example can be idiomatic. (It was hard for me to grasp that without context.) I still wouldn't analyze this as involving phrasal verbs, though. The Linguistics Girl link also mentions nothing about such verbs. – MarcInManhattan Dec 13 '22 at 20:07
  • Well, let's say phrasal-like verbs. – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 20:07
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    @EdwinAshworth Yes, I've seen "over" analyzed both as a preposition and otherwise in such phrases (somewhat similar to "ago" and other maybe-prepositions, I guess). – MarcInManhattan Dec 13 '22 at 20:08
  • Those are called "prepositional verbs" by Linguistics Girl and those who cite CGEL. – Tinfoil Hat Dec 13 '22 at 23:01
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    @Lambie I normally consider a phrasal verb to only be the verbs where a pronominalisation of the object would have to be in-between the verb part and the preposition part, my question doesn't have any phrasal verbs by my consideration, it has monotransitive verbs accepting PPs that accept PPs – minseong Dec 13 '22 at 23:22
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Writers use all sorts of truncations, ellipses, omissions etc. for effect. And they all mimic real speech. Also, this type of speech implies a listener or interlocutor.

Here are my made-up examples:

"We could not figure out where they stashed the dough. We searched the entire house and even the basement. Of course, my mother thought about [searching] under the bed. But made us look there for her. How could we have missed that?" [omission]

"The children finally get into bed and we tuck them in. Their mother knows that they need at least eight hours of sleep. She said so on the phone. She is worrying about [the effect of little sleep will have] in the morning but she is ten hours away on the West Coast."

"The maid gawked at behind the refrigerator." doesn't work for this kind of thing. Generally, if a person is gawking at something, the onlooker would have to see the other person's face doing that. I can't picture being able see someone gawking at the area behind a fridge as it seems to me that when someone is looking behind a refrigerator, only one person can look at a time and you would be hard pressed to see the expression on their face as a pulled-out refrigerator would hide the person's face from others. However, if hard pressed, one can imagine:

"The maid gawked at [the area] behind the refrigerator."

Good summary article on the main features of spoken English I only provide a taste of it here:

Even though numerous grammatical characteristics of day to day, spontaneous discourse are judged wrong by the principles followed by written discourse, these characteristics of spoken grammar should not be viewed as off base deviations from the written or standard English. In contrast to written discourse, spoken discourse is typically unconstrained and spontaneous and created progressively with no open door for amending (CULLEN and KUO, 2007).

Lambie
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  • Are prepositions taking other prepositions as arguments technically grammatical? Or do you think all such examples would be excluded by strict systems of prescriptive English? – minseong Dec 13 '22 at 18:38
  • @theonlygusti I don't think I would phrase it like that. For me, it's about how one might naturally leave things out and still be speaking English. That said, I frankly don't know if prescriptivists even accept the idea of a grammar of spoken English. In any case, in your example of under the bed, the verb is think about and the object is a phrase: under the bed, and not a single preposition. In fact, all your examples have phrases, not just prepositions. behind the refrigerator and in the morning. – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 19:24
  • Your examples are all phrasal-type verbs followed by prepositional phrases. – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 19:30
  • Prepositional phrases are just nouns with prepositions attached. The noun is the important part. The preposition is often meaningless, and merely required by a verb to make it transitive. Think/worry about and stare/look/gawk at are all transitivizers, not meaningful prepositions. And a prepositional phrase can be used as the object of other prepositions, or indeed as subject or object of verbs: Under the bed is the first place to look. – John Lawler Dec 13 '22 at 20:47
  • @JohnLawler My point is this, here "My mother thought about under the bed", The parse is My mother thought about + under the bed. In this case, you need the entire phrase, otherwise, she'd be thinking about the bed. She didn't think about the garden. So, in that example, there is no object of a preposition. There is a prepositional phrase that is the object of think about. Or not? – Lambie Dec 13 '22 at 23:09
  • I disagree with the analysis that these represent ellipsis. The prepositional phrase — in traditional grammar terms — functions like a noun does. Under the bed is dusty. And I don't care about under the bed. Even if you propose that this is equivalent to [The area] under the bed is dusty, that doesn't represent the speaker's mental model — they aren't leaving anything out. Under the bed = area. – Tinfoil Hat Dec 14 '22 at 04:17
  • @TinfoilHat Under the bed is dusty. is not: like the sentence given by the OP at all. But I never said it isn't like a noun did I? My mother thought about under the bed, Compare: My mother thought about the garden. Of course, under the bed is a noun. Just because I called it a prepositional phrase does not mean I would disagree that it is a noun! – Lambie Dec 14 '22 at 14:25