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Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong.

its context:economist

Grammatically,you need to have " clues to which..." and " to which... belong ". So is "to" double duty here？

Or it should have been:

Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to.

Do you think it is acceptable or the writer made a mistake?

Community
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Robby zhu
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    Similar: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/55126/191178 – Laurel Nov 03 '19 at 02:57
  • No,I think they are different. In this case, "to" goes with "clues",as in "clues to".So there should be an additional "to" before "which" or after "belong" – Robby zhu Nov 03 '19 at 03:09
  • It's an error: "which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to" is a subordinate interrogative clause (embedded question) where the meaning is "Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues to the answer to the question 'Which category do ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to?'" – BillJ Nov 03 '19 at 09:49
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    Please do not try and second guess The Economist. There is no better English-language news magazine in the world even though it is too conservative for my taste. It has the best writers and editors in the entire English-speaking world. – Lambie Nov 03 '19 at 17:03
  • @Lambie That's hyperbole. The economist is pretty good, but by nomeans infallible. They used to give Geoff Pullum ample opportunity to rib them in the THES. BillJ is right here, and you and the economist are wrong. If you think the to there has been pied-piped, try moving it back to the end of the sentence. You'll note the result is ungrammatical. Why did they end up in this mess? The dumbass policy of not ending a sentence with a preposition. It's always that that gets them, or avoiding "split infinitives". – Araucaria - Him Nov 03 '19 at 23:17
  • belong to a category: Which category do you belong to? [right] To which category do you belong? [right] Now, let's change clues + to to clues + on or about: Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues on or about the category to which ultra-expensive carmakers really belong. clues to, on or about*. Your transformations are incorrect. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 15:20
  • @Lambie You've changed the interrogative to a relative clause modifying the word category. That isn't a viable parse of the OP's sentence where category occurs *after* the interrogative phrase to which. – Araucaria - Him Nov 04 '19 at 16:47
  • In any event, this is not clues to [some thing]. As in: clues to the mystery or clues to the puzzle. 'The to which introduces a relative clause; the category to which something belongs. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 16:51
  • @Lambie, this doesn't clarify whether there's any "double duty". While I'd concure with you, I'd add that "provide ... to ..." usually subordinates the receiver of the provision, which is the whole reason for all ya'll general confusion. As a German, I can confirm that all proposed variants translate rather naturally, but the prefered variant would use a preposition to introduce the subordinate clause. – vectory Nov 04 '19 at 20:33
  • Yes, it does show there is no double duty. provide has a direct object (clues) and the relative clause after the preposition to is standard: to which, for which, of which etc. relative clauses are preceded by nouns. Here, the noun is clues. The second one is an outright English mistake. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 20:39
  • For reference, this would be "Er liefert Hinweise, zu welcher Kategorie er gehört", which is kind of OK. But, there's the synonyms "zu X gehören" and "X angehören", with the later inseperable. Now the funky bit is, that "zu" seems to serve double duty as well, because it's not acceptable to say "Er liefert Hinweise, welcher Kategory er angehört", perhaps because "welcher" is polysemous and commands a different interpretation when following a noun. The same argument works analoguously for English. – vectory Nov 04 '19 at 20:44
  • @vectory Translation cannot prove grammaticality of the source language. (I am a translator.) – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 20:48
  • @Lambie, but translation can provide a clue which works in the source language – vectory Nov 04 '19 at 20:55
  • @vectory You start in one and go to the other. If the first is faulty, the second should also be faulty. That's how it's done. But the L2 doesn't reveal L1., – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 21:08
  • @Lambie, note the translation argument works against your own inner-english transpositions, likewise. My argument works analoguously, nevertheless, especially if I should have been wrong to say "not acceptable", instead of "hardly acceptable" or "unusual", since I already said all the translations worked. – vectory Nov 04 '19 at 21:28
  • @vectory I really do not think you know what you are talking about. There is no translation argument. backtranslation does not prove anything about L1. Sorry, but I have had enough. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 21:29

3 Answers3

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Bill J wrote:

It's an error: "which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to" is a subordinate interrogative clause (embedded question) where the meaning is "Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues to the answer to the question 'Which category do ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to?'

Araucaria - Him
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  • There is no embedded question at all. There is provide clues and belong to a category. And, of course, "Please state which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to" = "Please state to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong". to which and which x does y belong to are semantically and grammatically equivalent. There is "no clues to" – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 15:50
  • @Lambie So, in your opinion, what kind of phrase is 'to which category they belong', which you believe is a constituent in the original sentence, if it is not an interrogative clause? – Araucaria - Him Nov 04 '19 at 16:22
  • to which they belong is a preposition followed by a relative pronoun and clause. These structures are typical in formal English: They man with whom they spoke. As opposed to informal or spoken English: The man they spoke to. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 16:48
  • @Lambie That would normlly be considered a relative clause. But that interpretation isn't available here, because ultraexpensve carmakers can't be conceived of as belonging to the category clue! [However, that would be entriely grammatical, and maybe that's why the sentence kind of sounds ok ..., even though that' not what's meant] – Araucaria - Him Nov 04 '19 at 16:51
  • How many times do I have to say it? There is no "clues to something". I find clues. [no to]. I find clues to which you object. That is exactly the same structure here. Your interpretation regarding a mistake is based on the idea that this should be: clues to [some thing]. That is not the case here. There is no noun after to, because the clause is: to which [blah blah blah] belong. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 16:53
  • But if the "to" goes with belong (as it should, belong doesn't take a direct object) there's nothing linking the first phrase to the second. Both phrasings are awfully clumsy IMHO. FWIW, I would have written "Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues as to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong.", or rewritten it totally. – Bloke Down The Pub Nov 04 '19 at 19:40
  • @BlokeDownThePub Typically, a noun precedes a "to which"-type of construction. The man suggested answers to which the questions really applied. There is no "link". – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 20:05
  • @BlokeDownThePub You’re right. There is no link there. The wh-clause here is not a relative clause, it’s a subordinate interrogative one. And you’re right that it needs something to be a complement of. The idiom have a clue (which normally occurs with a negative word) will take interrogatives, but the word clues in the phrase provide clues won’t, and as you note needs a preposition to link it to one. – Araucaria - Him Nov 05 '19 at 11:24
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Clues and prepositions

Let’s look at some examples of the use of clue/s from the [Cambridge Dictionary on-line]:

The police tried to reconstruct the crime using…clues that they had found. [No preposition]

The police found a vital clue to the girl's disappearance… [Preposition, to]

He pored over the letter searching for clues about the writer. [Preposition, about]

Let’s change the preposition

So, as clue can take about as an alternative to the preposition to, we can exchange the prepositions to get a clearer idea of the role of to in the sentence without changing either the meaning or the grammatical structure:

Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues about which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong.

Here the clues are about “which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong”.

But surely “ultra-expensive carmarkers really belong to a category”.

If so, it would appear that the journalist writing in the Economist made a mistake.

How awful! I once made one myself.

David
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  • 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. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 16:31
  • @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.) – David Nov 04 '19 at 17:07
  • 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?) :) – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 17:14
  • @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. – David Nov 04 '19 at 19:31
  • 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] – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 19:49
  • @Lambie Are you trying to say "to which [rest of clause]" is an apposition clause ？ – Robby zhu Nov 04 '19 at 23:59
  • @Robbyzhu Absolutely not. It is a relative clause with an introductory preposition. – Lambie Nov 05 '19 at 15:59
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X will provide clues. [no to]

These cars belong to a category. [belong to a category]

X will provide clues to which category the cars belong.

One is hard pressed to concoct a mistake in The Economist's sentence:

Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues // to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong.

The parse is shown by the slash

belong to a category is a verb plus a prepositional phrase.

The sentence does not say:

Clues to a category. [clues to plus a noun]. That parse here would be wrong.

provide clues is a verb plus a direct object.

to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong=

a relative clause introduced by the preposition to followed by a relative clause introduced by which.

Typical of formal English.

placement of prepositions

Just one example from that link:

INFORMAL: Is that the man (who) she arrived with?
FORMAL: Is that the man with whom she arrived?

Lambie
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  • "Clues" doesn't take a to unless there is a following complement. There is one in the Economist sentence. Try substituting with a different intertogative clause * "They will provide clues what happened" <--- Why's that ungrammatical? No "to", that's why! – Araucaria - Him Nov 03 '19 at 23:51
  • @Araucaria It is most definitely not ungrammatical. There are two separate issues: provide clues + belong to a category. The parse is not: provide clues to which etc. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 15:44
  • But every phrase in a sentence has some kind of grammatical function (subject/object/complement of a noun/complement of a preposition etc) What function/grammatical relations do you believe that the constituent to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong has, then? I can't just float in mid-air. – Araucaria - Him Nov 04 '19 at 16:25
  • /to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong/ to is a preposition followed by a relative pronoun (which) in a relative clause. The word clues here is not followed by a noun: clues to the mystery/clues to the puzzle. It is: clues to which you object. ha ha – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 16:56
  • That would make it a pied-piped relative clause. However, that isn't the meaning the Economist article has, as I tried to explain in my comment in our discussion under the question. By the way here is some discussion of The Economist by maybe its greatest fan – Araucaria - Him Nov 04 '19 at 17:01
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    @Araucaria Oh, so that isn't the meaning? You are a hoot. And this: Aston Martin’s IPO will provide further clues to which category ultra-expensive carmakers really belong to.= [buzzer]. Your reading depends on clues to [some thing]. – Lambie Nov 04 '19 at 17:10
  • Yes, that’s tight. That is the correct parse. The car makers belong to a category, not clues. And the clues are clues as to which category this is. – Araucaria - Him Nov 05 '19 at 11:30
  • The two categories there being "couture" or "clunker". – Araucaria - Him Nov 05 '19 at 11:55