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In the Order It Was Received

I was on hold just now, listening to the prerecorded voice tell me every thirty seconds that my call would be answered in the order it was received, and I wondered what the heck was going on in the grammar of that sentence. In colloquial English, there would be an “in” at the end, and in formal English, it would be “in the order in which it was received.” But instead the preposition was just missing.

What’s going on here? My instinct is that the speaker (or author of the line) is uncomfortable with that stranded preposition, but the traditionally correct alternative sounds so stuffy and wordy as to be unacceptable. Instead the preposition quietly disappears, like when children hide their vegetables or feed them to the dog instead of choosing between the unacceptable alternatives of either eating them or leaving them on the plate.

Unfortunately there’s not really a way to test this hypothesis. After all, when a word is missing, it doesn’t exactly leave an indication of where it went or why it went there, and most people are so unaware of their own linguistic impulses that you could never get a reliable response by asking people. Plus, I’ve found that most people don’t really like being cornered by linguists and interrogated about their missing words. I can’t imagine why.

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This entry was posted by Jonathon in Grammar, Usage on Monday, February 12th, 2007, at 10:00 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “In the Order It Was Received”

  1. Brinestone says:
    February 14th, 2007, at 1:14 pm |

    This post made me laugh. I especially loved the part about the vegetables. I have nothing constructive to add, though.

  2. mollymooly says:
    April 22nd, 2008, at 3:23 pm |

    One “in” is doing the job of two. Gower calls this phenomenon preposition cannibalism.

  3. More Prepositional Cannibalism « Literal-Minded says:
    November 9th, 2010, at 10:54 pm |

    [...] into a relative clause, you don’t just forget about the in. Jonathon at Arrant Pedantry knows what I’m talking about. He and I are flexible here; you have more than one option for what to do with the in. You can [...]

  4. Adrian says:
    January 2nd, 2011, at 6:03 am |

    Hmm. I think it’s possible to say “Your call will be answered in the order that it is received.” Also, try changing “receive” to make”.

  5. Jonathon says:
    March 14th, 2011, at 10:15 pm |

    I don’t see what difference changing “receive” to “make” makes. You can make calls in an order or receive them in an order, but you can’t make them an order or receive them an order. The “in” has to be there, and when the phrase is relativized, it still has to be there. Neal’s explanation on Literal-Minded is much more through than mine.

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