I found myself dismissing prepositions out of hand the other day. "They're just words that join their objects to other words in the sentence," I replied to a student's question. "Don't worry about 'em."
"At your peril!" I should have added to the end of that sentence, because an incorrect use of a preposition can lead one down a very murky path, indeed.
In school we all learned the rule: "Never end a sentence with a preposition," and then we quickly forgot it. Generally, that's not a bad thing. In fact, sometimes ending a sentence with a preposition sounds right. Often struggling not to end with the prepositions just sounds goofy, and you end up saying things like, "A preposition is a word with which one does not want to end a sentence."
Winston Churchill, who was confident with his writing style and not one to accept criticism too freely, demonstrated that an adherence to grammar rules above all can sometimes be ridiculous. He illustrated the some-time absurdity of the preposition rule when responding to a correction from an overzealous editor; Churchill wrote in the margin of the proofed text, "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put." Touché.
There's also the old joke about the small-town kid who asks his college buddy, "Who did you go to the dance with?" His newly educated friend tells him that he ought not to end a sentence with a preposition, so the kid replies, "OK, who did you go to the dance with, a--hole?"
It's no wonder we didn't learn grammar in school.
If rules were made to be broken, then the preposition rule can jump to the top of that list, but I should have warned my student that prepositions, when misused, can cause all sorts of miscommunication. Just consider the difference between the sentences, "I like to lie with you" and "I like to lie to you." That little word means everything there. Believe me, I've tried them both and the impact is quite different.
Recently I commented to my daughter that our new Premier was being "sworn in" in Victoria. She pointed out that with the protests in the city that day, she was probably being "sworn at," too. Fair enough.
And Robin Williams used the preposition for comic effect when playing on the expression, "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you," by changing the proposition, so the expression became, "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing near you."
So often, it's the small things that have the largest impact. Prepositions, the "also-rans" of the parts-of-speech team, the words we easily pass over in favour of verbs, nouns and modifiers, can mean so much.They deserve their due, and we need to accept that they are important words that we need to pay attention to. Or rather, to which we need to pay attention.
