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From: "Jim Heckman" <wnzrfeurpxzna@lnubb.pbz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Prepositions after verbs
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 07:37:42 GMT
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On 18-May-2004, Julien Pourtet <yulinux@gmx.net>
wrote in message <40aa9862$0$11228$626a14ce@news.free.fr>:
> migmam wrote:
>
> > Hello everybody.
> >
> > Question:
> >
> > is "Whom did you tell this story" equals or similar to "Who did you tell
> > this story to"?
>
> Grammar constructions mainly depend on verbs specificities.
Nuance: "specifics" would be better than "specificities" here.
And it's either "verb", singular, or "verbs'", plural
possessive.
> i.e. "tell" has a unique construction: to tell someone something
>
> This cannot work another way. Don't be confused between "tell" and
> "say", whose construction is different (to say something to someone).
Unfortunately, you have this exactly backwards. :-( It's "say"
that's unusual in that one can only "say s.t. to s.o.", not
*"say s.o. s.t.". But "tell" is just a normal transitive verb
that can also take an indirect object, like "give": one can
either "tell s.t. to s.o." or "tell s.o. s.t.".
> Hence, you can't have something like "Who did you tell this story to?",
> for "tell" doesn't require any preposition after.
"Who did you tell this story to?" is perfectly correct and
idiomatic, at least in General American.
> Anyone, if I am wrong, feel free to correct me ;o)
C'est fait. :-)
--
Jim Heckman
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