Re: can't tell

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
On 2008-01-31 09:05:20 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<acornish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On 2008-01-31 08:28:08 +0100, "Grzegorz Forc" <gforc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:

Maybe you could help me work it out.

I'm off home
or
I'm off to home
or
I'm off for home

These are colloquial expressions so there isn't necessarily a
"correct" answer. However, No. 1 seems the most natural to me, No. 2
is
definitely not natural, and No. 3 is between the two.

A complication that I only thought of after posting is that a small
and apparently trivial change in the sentence also changes the
answer. If you replace "home" to "my home" then the form with "to"
becomes not only possible but necessary, i.e. you can say

I'm off to my home

but you can't say

*I'm off my home

(at least, you can, but it means something quite different: I no
longer like my home), and you can't easily say

*I'm off for my home

I can't think of any logical explanation of this.

Please, sir, I know this one ... "home" in "I'm going home" can't be
preceded by a preposition or take a possessive pronoun because it's an
/adverb/. Centuries of attrition have brought it to an appearance
identical with that of "home" in "I'm off to my home", which is a noun,
but it remains a separate word. (It used to be the accusative of the
noun, though ... yep, OED confirms, and adds that occasionally, in one
of its senses, it even sprouted a comparative and superlative, "homer"
and "homest", which I certainly didn't know.)

--
Mike.



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