From The Soaraway Sun:
DOCTOR Who star Matt Smith has split up with model Daisy Lowe...
Call me old fashioned, but hasn't he split 'from' and not 'up with', in the same way as you get 'divorced from' somebody and not 'divorced up with' somebody?
Thursday, 24 November 2011
"up with"?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
It's a phrasal verb as long as it is followed by the relational preposition 'with'.
Up with better English!
The grammar police .. how exciting !!
I agree with Mark, the headline is very clumsy, what an odd day this is.
Using 'with' implies they split together from some larger group, as in "Redwood split up with Carswell from the conservative party to join UKIP.
K, does that mean that it is in fact correct?
AD, you I agree with.
W42, have they? That's exciting! Ah... I see.
If you have a lot of shared possessions would you not decide with your ex how to split them up? Hence "split up with"?!
"Daisy Lowe": sounds like another cow story.
To me 'split up with (s'one) is standard, but then I'm from Essex. It's a move from the mutual'they split up' to a subject-complement relation, using the same structure. 'Split from' sounds very formal to me.
I'd like to think I'd always defend the grammatical, but I'm thinking that before worrying about the grammar, one has to decide whether (a) one's heard of either of them or (b) whether one gives a shahit about their relationship..........
Sadly, my answer is "no" to both. Oh dear, what a shame, never mind. Next!
Kevin has aced it.You might say
"split from" but, once you are lumbered with the preposition "up",anything is psossible as the choice of prepositions is a matter of pure connention/usage.
A banging-head-on-the-desk moment can arise in EFL classes when some bright spark says he was standing
"on the bus stop";whereupon his deadly rival corrects him and says it should be "standing next to the bus stop".With luck the argument goes on for some time all of which the teacher gets paid for while doing nothing: sometimes the students resort to the stupidest argument possible"It's not logical".
QP, no the divorce court would.
CI, yes 'split from' sounds a bit clunky, but that signals that the whole sentence is wrong. Either 'X and Y have split up' or 'X has left Y' is much nicer.
FT, Walliams is a famous swimmer and as Dearieme points out, Daisy Lowe is a celebrity milkmaid.
DBC, if you're waiting for a bus it's AT the bus stop. If you are talking about something static like a shop it's NEAR or NEXT TO the bus stop.
Pedantical.
Post a Comment