Once again you have me rethinking how I get from words to meaning, which I appreciate.
I can’t tell how much the feels-right-ness of prepositional phrases acting as subjects has to do with idiom or maybe even artistic representation, but some of the ones that feel most right to me have the quality of position as an actual location more so than a spatial relationship. “Above the cedar tree” or “beside the parking meter” are not places I know much about. The “under the bed” you point to, though, is a place for monsters. “On the road” is a place you can live, like Paris or Pittsburg. “Up the creek” is its own special metaphoric destination. Even the more in-motion “into the woods” feels like a place to me, but maybe that’s just because of Stephen Sondheim.
I've always wondeered about the status of the introductory PP in the following, said when looking at a photo: "And up here in the corner is me". Assuming there is always one subject per finite clause it would seem to have to be the PP, because the accusative case of "me", one assumes, must rule it out. However, it still seems to be quite different from the examples above.
“Up here in the corner is me” is not possible?” What if I’m standing next to you and point at the photo and am confused if I’m pointing to me or my sister? It doesn’t sound wrong to me. A little eccentric, perhaps, but still grammatical. Or did I change it by adding the question mark?
Yes, with a question mark ‘Up here in the corner is me?’ is definitely possible, but that’s not an interrogative clause, but a declarative clause which would be pronounced with a question intonation. There’s no inversion here. Hope to write a post about this some time soon.
Once again you have me rethinking how I get from words to meaning, which I appreciate.
I can’t tell how much the feels-right-ness of prepositional phrases acting as subjects has to do with idiom or maybe even artistic representation, but some of the ones that feel most right to me have the quality of position as an actual location more so than a spatial relationship. “Above the cedar tree” or “beside the parking meter” are not places I know much about. The “under the bed” you point to, though, is a place for monsters. “On the road” is a place you can live, like Paris or Pittsburg. “Up the creek” is its own special metaphoric destination. Even the more in-motion “into the woods” feels like a place to me, but maybe that’s just because of Stephen Sondheim.
I've always wondeered about the status of the introductory PP in the following, said when looking at a photo: "And up here in the corner is me". Assuming there is always one subject per finite clause it would seem to have to be the PP, because the accusative case of "me", one assumes, must rule it out. However, it still seems to be quite different from the examples above.
Yes, it does seem to be different. Inversion is not possible: *Is up here in the corner me? We have two PPs at the start of this sentence.
“Up here in the corner is me” is not possible?” What if I’m standing next to you and point at the photo and am confused if I’m pointing to me or my sister? It doesn’t sound wrong to me. A little eccentric, perhaps, but still grammatical. Or did I change it by adding the question mark?
Yes, with a question mark ‘Up here in the corner is me?’ is definitely possible, but that’s not an interrogative clause, but a declarative clause which would be pronounced with a question intonation. There’s no inversion here. Hope to write a post about this some time soon.
Got it. Thanks for the quick reply!