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One of the most fundamental sentence from the English “phrasebook” that almost every beginner will learn is this sentence, using which one can ask another one’s nationality or country/region of origin.  However, this sentence has always troubled me.  

The word where is an adverb in this context, and it functions as an adverbial; from is a preposition, and it functions as part of the subjective complement in this sentence.  Id est, when responding to this clause, people may say, for example, “I am from Milan.”  Now, in that response, I is a pronoun functioning as the subject, and the rest of the sentence, am from Milan, is the predicate, which is comprised of the copula, or the linking verb, am, and the subjective complement, from Milan, which is a spatial adverbial.  

What I have learned about English grammar prescribes that an interrogative/relative adverb, such as where or when, cannot follow a preposition, because an adverb alone functions as an adverbial, and the structure “preposition + noun/pronoun” ought to correspond to an adverb.  Id est, the phrase from Milan (preposition + noun) can and should correspond to that adverb where, and structures such as from where are illegitimate.  

I think it is fairly common that adverbs do not follow prepositions.  People always say clauses such as where are you at is grammatically incorrect, because at is a preposition and where is an adverb, so it should simply be where are you.  Therefore, what troubles me is that why the phrase where are you at is incorrect and criticized, while I have not seen people avoiding where are you from.  

In my humble opinion, the canonical form of this clause should be from which country/region are you, or at least which country/region are you from, but it seems awfully pedantic and there is a highly probable chance that the utterer will get thrashed…

Apholiareun
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    You're from where? Outer space?? – TimR May 07 '15 at 00:50
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    Interrogative/relative adverbs do function as objects of prepositions, just not nearly as commonly as (pro)nouns. More or less non-finite non-determiner word can be the object of a preposition. A different type of example where the same adverb is very clearly the object of a preposition: “He wouldn't say anything about how he found it, but he gave us a very detailed description of where”. Where (like home) can be semantically allative and adessive and the prepositions used for that are thus not necessary; but it cannot be ablative. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 07 '15 at 00:53
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Thank you for the clarification! Apparently given the downvotes and that gentleman above you’s comment, my question is disturbingly foolish. I realized how much I still need to learn before posting stupid questions. Thank you again for your generous help! – Apholiareun May 07 '15 at 00:56
  • @tchrist Thank you very much! That thread is very helpful. You may delete this unsettling question. – Apholiareun May 07 '15 at 01:00
  • @Apholiareun Don't concern yourself with downvotes. No one has been imprisoned for them yet. And Tim was making a little pun (we're English language enthusiasts, punning is endemic around here). And no, your question was not stupid, it was educated. There are maybe 20 users on this site who are learned in grammar enough to understand it at face value, and maybe 5 who could produce a helpful response. Obviously Janus in both of those groups: but I'm in neither. – Dan Bron May 07 '15 at 01:03
  • (Having said that, I have learned to cultivate a skepticism of any purported rule of grammar which rejects language which is used frequently and unselfconsciously by a large range of native speakers. Grammar rules are derived from observing what native speakers say, not the other way around!) – Dan Bron May 07 '15 at 01:05
  • I should go to study now. It's the only way that may reduce my chance of being downvoted. Thank you all very much! – Apholiareun May 07 '15 at 01:27

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