I've seen a lot of sentences that finish in a preposition.
For example,
- She never took a taxi, even though she could afford to.
Why isn't this sentence like this?
- She never took a taxi, even though she could afford.
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1A version without a dangling preposition could be "She never took a taxi, even though she could afford it." – Weather Vane Jan 18 '23 at 20:43
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1Why do you think your example sentence is problematic? – nnnnnn Jan 18 '23 at 21:27
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@Greybeard It makes complete sense if the asker is a native speaker of Spanish or French or Italian or Portuguese or nearly every other language in the world. – tchrist Jan 19 '23 at 00:29
2 Answers
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As @tchrist explains, the "to" there is not a preposition; instead, it's the first part of an infinitive verb phrase "to take a taxi," where the rest of the phrase is omitted.
But here's why the sentence (the one ending in "to") still makes sense. This is a case of verb-phrase ellipsis (see Wikipedia). This happens when part of a verb phrase is omitted because that part occurs elsewhere (usually earlier) in the text.
Another example of this would be the sentence: "you want to go to the store, but I don't." The rest of the verb phrase "don't want to go to the store" is omitted, because "want to go to the store" occurs earlier in the text and verb-phrase ellipsis is possible here.
alphabet
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to be more like the sentence in the question, your example should end with "but I don't want to". You can't say "but I don't want" – Barmar Jan 18 '23 at 23:55
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Either "but I don't" or "but I don't want to" would be valid there; it depends on whether the ellipsis happens to the VP "don't want to go to the store" or whether it happens to the VP "to go to the store." – alphabet Jan 18 '23 at 23:57
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Because the version you suggest isn't actually grammatical. It doesn't say what she could afford.
Believe it or not, it turns out that your original sentence does not end with a preposition! It ends with the infinitive-marking particle to, which is not a preposition here. That's because the verb afford to VERB takes a to-infinitive.
So the understood sentence when written out in full is really this one:
- She never took a taxi, even though she could afford to do so.
So that's what the original means. No preposition is involved.
If you want the afford by itself at then end, then you need it to be an afford NOUN type of thing, not an afford to VERB type of thing. For example:
- She never took a taxi, even though this was something she could easily afford.
But that takes more fiddling around, and there's no need for that.
tchrist
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