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Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Vocabulary
Question's Subject
An English teacher told our class that "adjacent to" was repetitious, since the dictionary definition of adjacent (adverb) is next to. Substituting would give 'next to to'.
Yet we see in writing time and time again the phrase adjacent to.
Was the English teacher correct?
Yet we see in writing time and time again the phrase adjacent to.
Was the English teacher correct?
Top answer
Etymologically yes, but that often does not affect the naturalness or correctness of the language. I believe I have read 'noun + adjacent + noun' without 'to' in older English works, but nowadays, at least in AmE, the 'to' is always present. I could find no exceptions in the first 100 hits on the COCA corpus, for instance.
- Etymologically yes, but that often does not affect the naturalness or correctness of the language.
- I believe I have read 'noun + adjacent + noun' without 'to' in older English works, but nowadays, at least in AmE, the 'to' is always present.
- I could find no exceptions in the first 100 hits on the COCA corpus, for instance.
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2 Answers
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Etymologically yes, but that often does not affect the naturalness or correctness of the language. I believe I have read 'noun + adjacent + noun' without 'to' in older English works, but nowadays, at least in AmE, the 'to' is always present. I could find no exceptions in the first 100 hits on the COCA corpus, for instance.
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You teacher is technically correct. You can say, "The house is adjacent a pond.", instead of, "The house is adjacent to a pond." And the first sentence is apparently more correct, from a strict grammatical point of view. But this is a rather stilted, 19th century kind of English that is rarely heard today.
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