To what do you owe your success?

Question

In the movie trailer below, a girl acting the role of what seems to be a journalist interviews a successful man and asks, "To what do you owe your success?" (At 53 seconds)

(1) Is that a natural way of asking the question in context?

(2) How about these other options? How do they compare to the original in naturalness?

a. "What do you owe your success to?"

b. "What do you owe your success?"

GPY · Accepted Answer

1) Yes.

2a) This has a slightly less formal feel.

2b) Incorrect.

JungKim · Answer

Thanks.

So the original sentence isn't awkward or stilted at all.

But I have come across some similar examples here:

Who are you going with?
What are you waiting for?
We need something to put it in.

With whom are you going?
For what are you waiting?
We need something in which to put it.

The site says the former three are all natural and correct whereas the latter three "are all technically correct too, if you don’t mind sounding like you were born three hundred years ago," which I take to mean that they are not natural.

So I guess my question is how do I know when fronting the preposition will render the sentence unnatural as in the quoted examples and when it will not as in the OP?

GPY · Answer

I guess the more tightly the preposition is bound to the verb, the more unnatural the fronted order, with very tightly-bound cases being impossible rather than just unnatural. The latter category will include various idiomatic phrasal verbs; for example, "After whom are you looking?" is impossible.

Amongst the grammatically possible examples, I cannot actually think of any that are truly colloquial. Most tend to sound formal or stilted. The original example with "owe" ("To what do you owe ...") is more natural than most. For some reason this seems to have gained (or retained) popularity where other ostensibly similar patterns have not. It is interesting to note that of the relevant hits at COCA for "to what do", a large number, probably the majority, are in conjunction with the verb "owe". The next most popular verb seems to be "attribute". After that, examples are pretty thin.

JungKim · Answer

That's really interesting, and I like your analysis. Thanks!

To what do you owe your success?

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