Dragaera

"attraction" in grammar [was Re: House Pictures] OT, pedantry alert.

Casey Rousseau casey at the-bat.net
Tue Jan 11 23:36:33 PST 2005

Mark A. Mandel wrote: 
> 
> --- Joy Jennifer Nicholson <jjnichol at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > To which universities is he applying?
> > or (probably more correct)
> > To what universities is he applying?
> 
> Nothing wrong with those, but nothing wrong with "Which 
> universities is he applying to?" either. The old baloney 
> about "never end a sentence with a preposition" refers to 
> Latin grammar. Latin prepositions always come just before the 
> noun phrase they govern, even in dialogue showing the speech 
> of the uneducated. That's just not so in English. As 
> Churchill is said to have put it, "This is the kind of 
> nonsense up with which I shall not put."

When I made the remark about the English teacher and the dangling
preposition, I left out the smiley.  I was only using that construction to
help illustrate the noun verb agreement by moving the prepositional phrase
out of the way.

So sorry.

As for this question of which or what, it seems to me that while they could
both be correct, they have subtly different meanings.  Also, I would
probably only use what if I was expecting that he is only applying to one
university, i.e. 'What university is he applying to?'  Since this would be
unusual, I would more typically use which, simply by default. and would
probably still use it even when I did think there would be a single
university.

This is seat of the pants, so I would love it if you can steer me right on
this one.

Casey