0
Anonymous Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

Function of for

How can you tell what a preposition such as "for" refers to in the following sentence. "Like Wittgenstein, but with greater irony, Musil mocked everyone who substituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking that genuine understanding requires." Basically, I am reading the sentence in two different ways in one way, I read "for" as "because," so Musil mocked because of the hard thinking that genuine understanding requires, thus inflated rhetoric contains hard thinking. On the other hand, I read "for" as "instead," so Musil mocked inflated rhetoric to argue for (so he prefers) hard thinking.
  

Top answer

Anonymous substituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking When you look up "for" in the dictionary, you're faced with a very frightening array of uses and meanings. " Anonymous Musil mocked everyone who substituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking that Who (subject) substituted (verb) rhetoric (direct object) for (preposition) thinking (object of preposition). com/dictionary/british/for

— Avangi

  • Anonymous substituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking When you look up "for" in the dictionary, you're faced with a very frightening array of uses and meanings.
  • " Anonymous Musil mocked everyone who substituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking that Who (subject) substituted (verb) rhetoric (direct object) for (preposition) thinking (object of preposition).
  • com/dictionary/british/for
Free · every Monday

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.

1 Answers
0
Anonymoussubstituted a vaguely inflated rhetoric of soulfulness for the kind of hard thinking
When you look up "for" in the dictionary, you're faced with a very frightening array of uses and meanings.

In this case, it simply means, "Joe substituted this for that."
Anonymous Musil mocked everyone
0

Related Questions