- Soon we were clear of the town.
- *Soon we became clear of the town.
- *Soon we were more clear of the town.
- We stayed clear of the town.
- Just clear of the town I find men at work in an excavation in the sand.
- There was a house just clear of the town.
- A two hour walk would put them well clear of the town.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Clear as a preposition?
Consider clear in the following sentences. Is it most like an adjective, an adverb, or a preposition?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Not sure I'd agree that "Soon we became clear of the town" is ungrammatical. How about "Soon we got clear of the town"?
Yeah, got clear of town is fine 335,000 google hits, but only 7 Ghits for became clear of, and 3 of those are this blog, and only 1 is relevant.
I'd agree that "became clear of" is unidiomatic but not that it is ungrammatical.
As for your main question, I'm leaning towards an adverb modifying the prepositional phrase. I could be argued out of it, but I'm a staunch opponent of the Pullum/Huddleston redefinition of the preposition.
It's actually mostly Jespersen's idea (The Philosophy of Grammar p. 88), though Huddleston & Pullum have refined it, I think.
I think the adverb idea runs into problems right from the beginning. If you say He is of the city, the meaning is completely different, so I don't think clear is modifying of the city. If it were, it would mean something like `He is completely of the city'. You can also imagine this conversation:
OK, he's clear.
Clear of what?
The city.
So, I think clear is the complement of is. And that would be very unusual for an adjective.
"...for an adjective"
I meant: for an adverb.
Hmmm. You could say
1) He's south of the city
2) He's out of the city
but not
3) *He's in of the city
BTW, when I google "became clear of" I get 2,200,000 ghits and if I skip ahead to page 7 it becomes 5,500,000 ghits.
become clear of is certainly possible, as in the sky became clear of clouds, where it would be an adjective, but this is a different meaning from clear of the town.
That's true. I guess I forgot to ask: how did you narrow the results down to seven?
Sorry, it was became clear of town.
This seems a pretty cut and shut preposition, don't you think? It's distribution, complementation and modification are just like "out". Faldone you noted that "You could say
1) He's south of the city
2) He's out of the city
but not
3) *He's in of the city"
This falls in with other prepositions that license different complements in the same way that different verbs license different complements. So, for example, on doesn't seem to take finite clauses as a complements. In terms of 'clear' being an adjective, it doesn't seem to be gradable, so 'clearer of the town' won't get you any hits... You're both definitely right about it not being an adverb...
Post a Comment