Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 16:47:19 -0500 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: a nice place to live New subject: Frequently of late I see variants of the above phrase without "in" either preposed with "which" or stranded. Two such recent local citations are: "Welcome to Athens County--a great place to live, work, and visit!" (from a new webpage) and "we'll better be able to...make OU a better place to live and study and also to live" (from the student newspaper). I don't think the latter is a misprint; I suspect "live and study" is a cluster meaning "live as a student" vs. "live in general" (but I may be wrong). A conversion test for the first citation would presumably be: "Let's visit Athens"; "Let's live Athens"; "Let's work Athens." Granted, "a great place to work" may be common, but is the "live minus in" construction also widespread? I suspect it originated in the prescription-based reluctance to end a sentence with a preposition, esp. in writing. But when I surveyed my graduate students recently, I was amazed at the general acceptance of the form, one student even distinguishing between "in" (not required with 'live') and "within" (connoting something like "within city limits"). Most, in fact, seemed puzzled by my query. But then I saw an analogous statement on e-mail (from students in the Business College): "We have created a few questions that we would appreciate your quick response." And just now I heard "[eco-minded lumbermen in Brazil look for] an empty space for trees to fall." I know that pied-piping of preps with relative pronouns is increasingly rare, but this lack of any preposition at all mystifies me. Have others noticed this? (I will check Gilman's WDEU, Don!) Beverly Flanigan Ohio University