This is the room I sneezed in.

[Vladv1]

Based on the answers about when to strand in relative clauses, and when not to I make the following conclusion."This is the room I sneezed in -sounds bad since "sneeze" is a self contained verb , as opposed to the verb "lean" for example, which always needs a complement, so "This is the wall I lean against" sounds great. Am I correct? Any ideas? Or does the possibility for stranding depends on the realtive word, for example with "whose" as a realtive pronoun it is harder to strand prepositons of verbs that are usually self contained?

 

[emsr2d2]

Notwithstanding the unlikelihood of anyone ever needing to express the location of a sneeze, I don't know why you think "This is the room I sneezed in" sounds "bad" (whatever that means). If I ever found myself in a situation in which it was important to specify the room in which I had previously sneezed, "This is the room I sneezed in" is exactly what I would say.

 

[Annabel Lee]

We could vary the example slightly, to something perhaps slightly more likely:

This is the person I sneezed on. [I'd prefer not to sit next to him. He hasn't forgotten about it.]​

 

[jutfrank]

First of all, as the others have said, the position of 'in' in 'This is the room I sneezed in' doesn't sound bad at all.

Second, I don't think your idea about 'self-contained' verbs is accurate. Both verbs 'sneeze' and 'lean' take locative complements, and it doesn't matter to stranding whether a verb needs a complement anyway, regardless of whether the prepositional object is 'argument-like' (like the wall) or not.

Third, if I understand what you're asking, yes, I think that 'whose' does have some effect on possibility of preposition stranding. (Did we discuss this in a previous thread?)

 

[Vladv1]

First of all, as the others have said, the position of 'in' in 'This is the room I sneezed in' doesn't sound bad at all.

Second, I don't think your idea about 'self-contained' verbs is accurate. Both verbs 'sneeze' and 'lean' take locative complements, and it doesn't matter to stranding whether a verb needs a complement anyway, regardless of whether the prepositional object is 'argument-like' (like the wall) or not.

Third, if I understand what you're asking, yes, I think that 'whose' does have some effect on possibility of preposition stranding. (Did we discuss this in a previous thread?)

Thanks. So "This is the woman whose room I sneezed in" sounds bad compared to "This is the woman in whose room I sneezed"?

 

[5jj]

Not at all. How did you come to that conclusion?

 

[jutfrank]

So "This is the woman whose room I sneezed in" sounds bad compared to "This is the woman in whose room I sneezed"?

No, it's the other way round if anything.

 

[emsr2d2]

"This is the room I sneezed in" doesn't sound "bad" at all. The alternative would be "This is the room in which I sneezed". That's equally grammatical but less common. I don't know why you added the information about a woman. To include that information, you'd use either "This is the woman whose room I sneezed in" or "This is the woman in whose room I sneezed". As with the other example, the former is more common.