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Deepcosmos Posted 5 years ago
Grammar

Preposition ‘of’ by itself can take the objective clause?

Hello, everyone,

Paralysis by analysis is a state of overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but you still end up not making a decision. One famous ancient fable of the fox and the cat explains this situation of paralysis by analysis in the simplest way. In the story, the fox and the cat discuss how many ways they have to escape their hunters. Cat quickly climbs a tree. Fox, on the other hand, begins to analyze all the ways to escape that he knows. But unable to decide which one would be the best, he fails to act and gets caught by the dogs.

* source; extracted from one test for Korean high school students

When I see the underlined sentence, I feel something wrong, since I think the preposition ‘of’ by itself can’t take the whole objective clause, “overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but you still end up not making a decision”.

In my own way, I’ve paraphrased it as follows;

1. Paralysis by analysis is a state of overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but still ending up not making a decision. (‘but you’ deleted)

2. Paralysis by analysis is a state where overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, you still end up not making a decision." (‘of’ replaced with ‘where’)

3. Paralysis by analysis is a state where you still end up not making a decision, overthinking and analyzing a particular problem.“

4. Paralysis by analysis is a state where you overthink and analyze a particular problem, and still end up not making a decision.“

Will appreciate if you kindly advise which is the most natural among four. If yet none, please propose with better one.

  

Top answer

deepcosmos When I see the underlined sentence, I feel something wrong, since I think the preposition ‘of’ by itself can’t take the whole objective clause, “overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but you still end up not making a decision”. I think it can, but I agree it is not ideal. To my mind, there are bigger problems that make this a poor test question unless they ask about them.

— Anonymous

  • deepcosmos When I see the underlined sentence, I feel something wrong, since I think the preposition ‘of’ by itself can’t take the whole objective clause, “overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but you still end up not making a decision”.
  • I think it can, but I agree it is not ideal.
  • To my mind, there are bigger problems that make this a poor test question unless they ask about them.
  • The writer has tried to apply the prefix "over-" from "overthinking" to "analyzing" as if it was a standalone word.
  • It has to be "overthinking and over-analyzing a particular problem …" whether you like it or not.
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2 Answers
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deepcosmosWhen I see the underlined sentence, I feel something wrong, since I think the preposition ‘of’ by itself can’t take the whole objective clause, “overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, but you still end up not making a decision”.

I think it can, but I agree it is not ideal. To my mind, there are bigger problems that make this a poor test

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deepcosmosWill appreciate if you kindly advise which is the most natural among four. If yet none, please propose with better one.

I think 4 is the most natural (but remove the comma), and 2 is pretty close, but I'd tweak it a bit:

Paralysis by analysis is the state where, after overthinking and analyzing a particular problem, you stil

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