| 词组 | following |
| 释义 | following The fourth definition of the preposition after in Webster's Second 1934 contains this defining phrase: "following the expiration of." The word following in that phrase is used as a preposition. It must have seemed natural to the editor who wrote it, and it passed unnoticed by other editors working on the dictionary, but they did not enter following as a preposition in Webster's Second (1934) (it was added to the Addenda Section in 1955). The phrase does not occur in the definition of after in Webster 1909, so apparently the prepositional use became established in the period between the editing of the two dictionaries. Our earliest notice of it is in Hyde 1926 where it is called a misuse for after. It was presumably appearing in newspapers at that time, but we do not have an actual example. The Addenda and Corrigenda to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary entered following as a preposition in 1955 with citations dated 1851 and 1914. These citations are not included in the OED Supplement; perhaps the Oxford editors were doubtful of their authenticity. The prepositional use went virtually unnoticed until Gowers 1948 complained about it. Even then he thought it was too late to block its use, and in his 1965 revision of Fowler he grudgingly accepted it when "it implies something more than a merely temporal connexion between two events, something more than after but less than in consequence of." Bernstein 1971 observes that this is a fine distinction to make and predicts that writers are not likely to make it. Several English commentators (Sellers 1975, Phythian 1979, Bryson 1980, Longman 1984, Burchfield 1981) have followed Gowers in finding fault with the preposition. Our reading indicates that it is more of an issue in Britain than in America. A good deal of our evidence of use comes from brief biographical sketches: • Following a journey to Russia, in 1882, he imported into the Northwest from that country hardier varieties of fruit trees —Dictionary of American Biography, 1929 • Following the armistice Minton remained with the Army of Occupation —Current Biography 1949 This suggests that one appeal of following is as an alternative to after. It may also suggest itself to a writer as a counterpart to another participial preposition, during: • During World War II, we helped train and equip twenty Nationalist divisions to oppose the Japanese and following the war helped train and equip forty more to oppose Mao Tse-tung —Chester Bowles, Saturday Rev., 6 Nov. 1971 The chief argument of the British critics is that following can be used to ludicrous effect. They illustrate this by making up ludicrous examples or by reproducing real examples which must be misread to prove the point. Our files contain no particularly silly examples. We do find examples from time to time, however, in which following has been used in a context where its meaning is less than clear: • In March 1863, following the manifest intention of the British ministry to enforce the Foreign Enlistment Act more strictly, he went to Paris —Dictionary of American Biography, 1929 There is nothing grammatically objectionable in the use of following as a preposition. We do suggest, however, that if you use it you make sure it cannot be misread as a simple participle. |
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