the city that I have a map of/the car that I fixed the engine of

[Vladv1]

Why the sentence " This is the city that I have a map of" sounds fine, while "The is the car that I fixed the engine of" sounds bad, even though the structure is identical. Please help, I really am confused.

 

[5jj]

Why does the sentence " This is the city that I have a map of" sounds fine, while "This is the car that I fixed the engine of" sounds bad,

Neither is particularly elegant, but the first is not much better than the second.

 

[jutfrank]

Vlad, I'm not sure we can answer these questions about preposition placement helpfully until we understand why you seem to think that certain sentences sound fine or bad compared to other ones. How do you know they do? From your own sense?

 

[Vladv]

Neither is particularly elegant, but the first is not much better than the second.

Why are they not elegant?

 

[Vladv]

Vlad, I'm not sure we can answer these questions about preposition placement helpfully until we understand why you seem to think that certain sentences sound fine or bad compared to other ones. How do you know they do? From your own sense?

https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/...paint-after-the-hotel-i-am-staying-at.305873/ please see post 8. It says that verbs that sound good without prepositional complement usually do not strand.

 

[emsr2d2]

https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/...paint-after-the-hotel-i-am-staying-at.305873/ please see post 8. It says that verbs that sound good without prepositional complement usually do not strand.

If the "??" in d) in Annabel Lee's is supposed to indicate that they're not 100% happy with that construction, I'd have to disagree. I have no problem with "She's the woman whose house a dog has been barking in". I wouldn't necessarily word it that way myself. I'd probably say "A dog has been barking in this/that woman's house".

 

[5jj]

Why are they not elegant?

I said they weren't particularly elegant. That's not the same thing.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Why the sentence " This is the city that I have a map of" sounds fine, while "The is the car that I fixed the engine of" sounds bad, even though the structure is identical.

I agree that the second example sounds far worse than the first; it cries out to be edited to:

This is the car whose engine I fixed.​

I don't think someone's having a map of a city is grammatically comparable to an engine's being the engine of a particular car.