Is "to put something" grammatically correct? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by gentooer@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'll preface this by saying that English is not my mother language and I'm sorry if this isn't the right community, but I didn't find a more appropriate one.

Last year I started to notice more and more people on YouTube for example using the verb "to put" without a preposition -- like "Now I put the cheese" -- which sounds very weird and kind of feels wrong to me. Is this really used in spoken English and is it grammatically correct?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Caveat lector: I'm not a native speaker, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

This exception seems to be a case of right-edge deletion - you're generating the sentence as if you were to utter the adverbial/prepositional complement, but then you chop the sentence just before the element. This can be shown by the following:

I put some flowers on the table. // OK, complete sentence. Typically including a falling tone near the end.
I put some flowers... // "on the table" is on the right edge, so it can be deleted.
I put some flowers on the table for decoration. // OK
[?] I put some flowers for decoration. // Weird, probably agrammatical.

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023

45 points (90.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43781 readers

876 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS