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Jawel Posted 8 years ago
Grammar

They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives

Hello, my friends.

This is the original sentence. "They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives"

Someone on a different forum said:

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Let's say there are two sentences.

1-) They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives

2-) They have bad dreams about the rest of their lives

In the first example, you can put "for" at the beginning.

However, in the second example, you can't absolutely put "about" at the beginning.

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Do you agree with this idea?

If we use "for", we can put it at the beginning and it will be totally OK, but if we use "about", we can't absolutely put it at the beginning.

This idea seems to be unnecessarily-confident and based on prejudices. Because I can see no reason giving a possibility to be put at the beginning to the preposition "for" even if it doesn't give it to the preposition "about".

Additionally, I don't think that there are English rules allowing "for" to be located at the first, forbidding "about" to be at the first.


What do you think? Thanks.

  

Top answer

I believe you are asking about the acceptability of these two transformations: a) They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives. -> For the rest of their lives they have bad dreams. b) They have bad dreams about the rest of their lives.

  • I believe you are asking about the acceptability of these two transformations: a) They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives.
  • -> For the rest of their lives they have bad dreams.
  • b) They have bad dreams about the rest of their lives.
  • -> About the rest of their lives they have bad dreams.
  • (a) is OK, but (b) does not work.
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1 Answers
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I believe you are asking about the acceptability of these two transformations:

a) They have bad dreams for the rest of their lives. -> For the rest of their lives they have bad dreams.
b) They have bad dreams about the rest of their lives. -> About the rest of their lives they have bad dreams.

(a) is OK, but (b) does not work. This is because "

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