Timeline for Can preposition "to" be omitted in this case
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 5, 2019 at 15:59 | comment | added | Lambie | @Robbyzhu Absolutely not. It is a relative clause with an introductory preposition. | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 23:59 | comment | added | Robby zhu | @Lambie Are you trying to say "to which [rest of clause]" is an apposition clause ？ | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 19:49 | comment | added | Lambie | My joke about biology was to show (you) that the structure of my sentence and the OP's sentence are exactly the same. You ignored, in fact, what I actually said. One last attempt: The implied parsing by you, Bill J and Araucaria is mistaken: There are not two to prepositions. There is "belong to" but there is no "clues to" [thing]. It's provide clues and to which [rest of clause] | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 19:31 | comment | added | David | @Lambie — One might quibble with the Biology, but it is not important in this context. The problem remains the same: euphony gives one answer, analysis gives another. It would be good if some other grammarians weighed in on this. I’m prepared to be proved wrong. | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 17:14 | comment | added | Lambie | David, please, bear with me: You cannot see your way through: "Clues to X", X="which category they belong" because the parse is: |provide clues| + "to which strand the DNA belongs"(Is my biology right?) :) | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 17:07 | comment | added | David | @Lambie — I initially thought you right as the two "tos" sounds clumsy (and I certainly haven't downvoted your answer), but I cannot see my way through the following: "Clues to X", X="which category they belong". Is X grammatical — can you have belong and category without a preposition? If, for example, you make X into a sentence by adding "do" — "Which category do they belong" it lacks the preposition "to". (I appreciate you can use belong without a preposition — I do not feel I belong here, take me back to SE Biology. But that is not what we have here.) | |
| Nov 4, 2019 at 16:59 | history | edited | David | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
emphasized lack of change in grammatical structure
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| Nov 4, 2019 at 16:31 | comment | added | Lambie | Just because clues can take the prepositions to, about, on does not at all mean that here it is: "clues to [noun]". The police found some vital clues. They belonged to various categories. The vital clues found by police belonged to several categories. The OP's is: clues to which category they belong. | |
| Nov 3, 2019 at 18:21 | history | answered | David | CC BY-SA 4.0 |