What are prepositions? How is Plus a preposition?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Pedroski

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Member Type
Other
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
China
Had to finish a game of poker first!

Philo, you seem so set on concluding an argument and winning.(QED) As if there were nothing left to say. Try to just enjoy a good debate, and relax. You will learn something! The secrets of language are so intimately tied to consciousness, that, until we understand the latter, we will never fully understand the former.

Remember: you said a PP has no head?
"A preposition, however, cannot be regarded as intrinsically any more vital to a prepositional phrase than its object noun"
That kind of says: break it up, and it is nothing, agreed??

You are aware that prepositional phrases form adverbs?? cf two (plus(add to) three)

The bus driver waited.
The bus driver waited. Where?
The bus driver waited (outside the church).
How did he wait? Where did he wait?
He waited (together with the tour guides) (outside the church).
'tour guides' is the object of 'with' not 'waited' It is definitely not a co-subject.
Adverbs take various places in sentences.
He waited patiently outside the church.
He patiently waited outside the church.
Patiently, he waited outside the church.
He (together with the tour guides) waited (outside the church).
(Together with the tour guides) he waited (outside the church).
He patiently waited outside the church.
Take a bit of the adverb, and combine it with 'and'
*He and ently waited outside the church. Not good.

What you have done is taken a bit of the adverb, and used it with 'and'. You broke it up! That was naughty! Of course, from false premises one surmises false conclusions.

Because a word in one sentence is a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, whatever, it does not follow that it needs must be the same in every sentence. Even your beloved grammar books say that. You really should learn to question your grammar books.
 

philo2009

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
Japan
What definition from your competent grammarians are you using to unquestionably establish the subjecthood of 'two plus three'?

Pedroski

Your lamentable ignorance of even the most basic of grammatical terms leaves me strangely unsurprised that you struggle with the concept of 'subject'.

No doubt you believe that 'two plus three' is some kind of object here, - no wait, perhaps it's a complement...or a copula....

:lol:
 

philo2009

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
Japan
Pedroski wrote:

Philo, you seem so set on concluding an argument and winning.(QED) As if there were nothing left to say.
All that I have ever been set on is stating (for the benefit of the questioners who come here in all sincerity expecting reliable, expert tuition in matters of English grammar) the accepted application of concepts and terminology within a well-established, internally consistent analytical framework - as opposed to within Pedro's world of wacky pet-theories.

Try to just enjoy a good debate, and relax. You will learn something!
Not from you, I won't! Except perhaps how to arbitrarily redefine standard grammatical terms whenever it suits me - something at which you excel.

The secrets of language are so intimately tied to consciousness, that, until we understand the latter, we will never fully understand the former.
Oh, yes, of course. How silly of me to overlook that.
So your unilateral redefinition of 'copula' recently was justified because, after all, copulas exist only within the confines of our individual consciousnesses, making Pedro's copula genuinely different from mine and everyone else's. Oh, thank you for helping me to see the light!

Of course, from false premises one surmises false conclusions.
And from Pedro one expects, and generally gets, only incoherent drivel...

You really should learn to question your grammar books.
And you really should learn to read one now and again. Then YOU might learn something, and - who knows? - actually become competent to answer questions in this forum!
 

philo2009

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Member Type
Academic
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
Japan
Every sentence in english has a subject. I am not that deep into english so I don't know it follows with latin or german. So do exactly what you mean, you have lost me.

But I do know from reading the other posts from others, that they have defined that (two plus three) in my example is a subject.

So I will leave it at that before I get more confusued

Listening to Pedroski is indeed a guaranteed recipe for confusion! I don't think that even he can actually believe most of the nonsense that he writes.

I was at first, perhaps rather charitably, inclined to believe that he was merely a well-meaning, albeit somewhat unschooled, eccentric. One is, however, increasingly forced to consider the possibility that he takes some sort of malicious pleasure in contradiction for its own sake, and - far worse - in deliberately misleading our questioners.

I am pleased that you feel that your question has been satisfactorily answered, and will now take my leave of this thread for pastures new!

EOC
 
Last edited:

5jj

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
Czech Republic
Current Location
Czech Republic
The problem with discussions such as this one is that they can get bogged down in additional discussions of terminology and logic.

When discussing language, I find it useful to bear in mind two things:

1. Languages do not follow formal rules of logic. We can come up with all sorts of explanations for such 'illogical' utterances in English as:

A number of people are objecting to this.
The number of people who object to this
is increasing.

None of the explanations will satisfy everybody. Whether we like it or not, a number of + noun is normally regarded as plural with respect to the following noun, and the number of + noun as singular.

2. Words used in grammar, such as preposition, conjunction, subject, tense, etc are not things, they are labels. We use them because they generally help us when we want to talk about language. They are, however, only as helpful as the definitions we give to them. If two people who discuss whether plus in a particular utterance is a preposition or conjunction cannot agree on a precise definition of the two underlined words, then they will never agree on a satisfactory answer.

Philo was adopting a common-sense approach when he wrote, ''Nobody, I think, would ever dispute that 'two plus three' does indeed constitute, as a totality, the subject-phrase of the sentence." For most of us, the grammatical subject governs (to use a word from my schoolboy days) the verb. In the utterance in question, what governs the verb is is the phrase two plus three. So, it is the subject(-phrase).

We have a similar situation with:

Five pounds
is not enough.

Nobody, I think, would ever dispute that five gives a clear indication of pluarility, or that pounds is the plural form of pound; and yet native speakers view the totality of five pounds as a singular sum of money, the totality being the subject of the verb is.

An informal survey of a number of native-speaking colleagues revealed that most would say two plus two is four, and that none would say two plus two are four. On the other hand, all of them agreed that they could say both two and two is four and two and two are four. None of them could come up with a completely satisfactory explanation. So, there is a significant difference between and and plus, but the preposition vs conjunction argument does not appear to help.
 

Pedroski

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Member Type
Other
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
China
Philo, baby, if you can't recognize an adverb when you write one, what use has it been reading all your grammar books written by competent grammarians? What you need is arguments, not books! Learn English, and argue!

Give us a concrete definition of 'subject', so that we humble learners may benefit from your wisdom!
 

corum

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2010
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Hungary
Current Location
Hungary

corum

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2010
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Hungary
Current Location
Hungary
I wish you wouldn't use four letter words like that! 'work' is not a word one uses in polite circles!


Philo, baby, if you can't recognize an adverb when you write one, what use has it been reading all your grammar books written by competent grammarians? What you need is arguments, not books! Learn English, and argue!

You are shallow and pathetic, Pedroski, a nasty piece of work. Polite circles? Please do not use phrases whose meanings you do not even know.

IMO you are this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

To Philo:
"Do not feed the trolls!"
 

Nightmare85

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2009
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
German
Home Country
Germany
Current Location
Germany
Guys, what are you doing? :-o
I can understand that you are frustrated about the fact that I'm only online on the weekends, but there is no need to fight one another. :)
:lol::lol::lol:

And corum, you should update your country and your current location, my friend :)

Cheers!
 

corum

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2010
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Hungary
Current Location
Hungary
Two and two is four ...
If and were a conjunction in that context, the resulting meaning would be 1 is 2.

A ham and eggs is what I ate.
I ate a ham? I ate eggs? No! I ate [a ham and eggs]. "and" is a conjunction there? No doubt about it!
 

corum

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2010
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Hungarian
Home Country
Hungary
Current Location
Hungary
cooking machine:
input: ham, eggs
output: [ham and eggs]

You need ham and you need eggs for preparing a ham and eggs. -- and = conj.

addition machine:
input: 1, 2
output: 3

You need 1 and you need 2 for preparing 3. -- and = conj.
 

Pokemon

Member
Joined
Jun 5, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
Russian
Home Country
Russian Federation
Current Location
Russian Federation
To say whether 'plus' is a preposition or a conjunction, we need to decide whether "two" and "three" in the sentence "Two plus three is five" are of equal rank or not.
The method I'm going to suggest is based on the fact that copulative syntagms do not change their meaning when the positions of the consituents are exchanged. For example, Tom and Harry are friends = Harry and Tom are friends.
Now I see, that the advocates of the 'plus-conjunction' theory are already prepared to celebrate their victory. Not so fast, please. The words 'plus' and 'minus', though different by their lexical meaning, grammatically are abasolutely the same. I think nobody in their right mind would insist that 'plus' and 'minus' belong to different parts of speech just because their lexical meaning is the opposite.

Three minus two is one
Two minus three is ??? (one?)

If 'two' and 'three' were of the same rank, the meaning of the sentence wouldn't have changed. But it did. So they are of different rank. Therefore 'minus' connecting the two elements within the syntagm is a preposition, and so is 'plus'.
 

Pedroski

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Member Type
Other
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
China
Corum, is your native language really English? Ask Philo what he thinks of:

'If 'and' is indeed a prep, how 'are' is okay here:'

When you run out of arguments, insults won't really substitute, even if they make you feel better. I did say please show me where I am wrong. I am willing to accept your better knowledge in this. Demonstrate it!
 

alkaspeltzar

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2006
Member Type
Other
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
You know, this is frustrating.

There is all this fighting and arguing going on from one question. Hello? I thought this was a help site to answer a basic grammar question. And in the end, I am still confused. So I will ask AGAIN hoping to get a basic, non contradictory answer.

My question is this, is "plus" a conjuction or prepostion? Grammar books define it as both.

And as such, when one writes the sentence "two plus three is five", isn't 'two plus three' acting as the subject or noun that is equal to five? In the end, it is the two and three that together make five. Everyone knows that is what it means, so how does 'plus' work here as a preposition to join 'two plus three' as one value/subject equal to five?

Please just answer it, I am just confused after all the indepth explainations.

Thanks
 

e2e4

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2007
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Serbo-Croatian
Home Country
Bosnia Herzegovina
Current Location
Bosnia Herzegovina
/A learner/

Dear member alkaspeltzar
sometimes grammar of a language cannot fit mathematical rules and say what mathematical equals mean. Using mathematics' symbols we shortly express this below

2+3=5

And the whole world understand what it means.

Imagine a set of two tomatoes.
Imagine another set of three tomatoes.

If I add these 2 tomatoes from the first set to the set with three tomatoes I get a set of 5 tomatoes.
I modified the set of three to a different set of 5 pieces.

So I change the quantity of the set of three with the set of two.
Two pluses three into five.
But!
Pluses is not a verb. What a pity!

If "plus" were a verb as well and not only preposition, noun, conjunction or adjective then all the problems would be solved.(Dear teacher Lauralie2, I know it will be when pigs fly;-):-D.)

The sentence would be grammatically correct.

Two ~ subject
pluses ~ predicate
three ~ object
into ~ preposition
five ~ I don't know what could be "five" in this sentence. Is anyone ready to give me the answer.:)
 
Last edited:

TheParser

VIP Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2009
Member Type
Other
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
I am particularly interested in how the word 'plus' is a preposition. In the example, "Two plus three equals five", according to my dictionary, plus is a preposition. How? Seems more like a conjunction.

And isn't the entire phrase "two plus three" the subject of the sentence, since that is what is equal to five? It is both the two and three together.

Thanks for the help in advance. I appreciate the explaination.

***** NOT A TEACHER *****

(1) Here is the opinion of Mr. Morton S. Freeman in his A Treasury for

Word Lovers (1983):

(a) [Plus] frequently serves in arithmetical contexts as a

preposition, meaning "increased by" or "along with."

(i) Mr. Freeman says that in "Two plus four equals six," the

subject is "two," and the singular verb "equals" agrees with the

singular subject "two." [My comment only: I assume that "plus

four" is then analyzed as a prepositional phrase modifying "two."

That is: two (along with four) equals six.]

(b) Mr. Freeman calls plus a conjunction in:

Ruth is a knowledgeable nurse plus a pleasant person.

Tom plus his three sisters came early.

Mr. Freeman does NOT recommend this use. He says that

"particular writers" [My comment: careful writers?] would use

"and."

*****

Mr. Michael Dummett in his Grammar and Style (1993) is horrified by the

use of plus as a substitute for "and." Mr. Dummet, once a professor

of logic at Oxford, lectures us:

The use of plus in place of and or in addition, though favoured
[favored] by broadcasters, is a vulgarism and not to be imitated.

***** NOT A TEACHER *****
 

Abstract Idea

Key Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2009
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Portuguese
Home Country
Brazil
Current Location
United States
There is all this fighting and arguing going on from one question. Hello? I thought this was a help site to answer a basic grammar question. And in the end, I am still confused. So I will ask AGAIN hoping to get a basic, non contradictory answer.

Dear Alkaspeltzar,

You know, this is precisely one of the main reasons that I like this web site. You interact simultaneously with different teachers, language experts, linguists, grammarians and the like (as well as with many simple humble language students). Different opinions on the same subject are expressed. If you were studying with a single teacher you would have a single comfortable answer to your question, here this is definitely not the case. Even at a university the studying environment is different, you have many professors and language experts to learn from and discuss with, but they tend to avoid direct confront. There are pros and cons, let us take advantage of the former.

Of course this does not justify the lamentable "fights" and arguments of some of our colleagues. It really deeply disgusts me to read offending words in some posts here. I forgive those colleagues though, nobody is perfect and their unquestionable high knowledge of English must be respected.
 

Pedroski

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Member Type
Other
Native Language
British English
Home Country
UK
Current Location
China
I thought I mentioned before: if you read 'plus' as 'and' in your sentence, then you are saying:

2 and 3 is/are 5. cf My wife and I are hungry. I am hungry, and my wife is hungry.
2 is 5 plus/and 3 is 5. Not good.

plus is an operation of bringing to, adding to, one thing to another. Read 2 to 3 is 5.

2 can't be the subject, as 2 is 5 is not good. Similarly 3. So go for (2 plus 3) as your subject. Or 5. They are equal.
 

alkaspeltzar

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2006
Member Type
Other
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Pedroski,

Thank You for the answer. So let me just make sure I understand it right.

What you are saying is the in the sentence "Two plus three equals five", it would make no sense to say '3 is the subject' or '2 is the subject'. You cannont have 3=5 or 2=5, that would not be correct.

So as such, the word 'plus' is a preposition type word meaning added to, and it joins two and three, such that 'two plus three' is the value/subject equal to five.

From reading other posts and yours, this makes the most sense. This is correct right?

Thanks again
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top