Many people will be somewhat surprised that the American Dialect Society's "Word of the Year" choice was because in its use with an NP complement. It seems to be unprecedented for a word in a minor category like preposition to be chosen rather than some emergent or fashionable word in one of the major lexical categories: recent winners have been 2012's hashtag (noun), 2011's occupy (verb), 2010's app (noun), 2009's tweet (noun and verb), 2008's bailout (noun), 2007's subprime (adjective), 2006's plutoed (past participle of verb), and 2005's truthiness (noun). And it also seems to be unique in representing a new syntactically defined word use within a given category rather than a new (or newly trending) word. The syntax of because calls for a little discussion, I think, given the remarkable fact that every dictionary on the market is wrong in the part-of-speech information it gives about the word (write to me if you can find a dictionary of which this is not true: I'd love to see one).
What the American Heritage Dictionary says about because will do as a basis for discussion, since the dictionaries pretty much all agree (they basically just plagiarize each other). It reports that because is a "conjunction", but also that there is a word spelled because of, which is a preposition. Both claims are flamingly and demonstrably wrong.
Traditional grammar recognizes two types of "conjunction" (I put the word in scare quotes because, although famililar, it is a most undesirable choice of terminology): there are "subordinating conjunctions" and "coordinating conjunctions". Because isn't like either.
The classic "subordinating conjunction" is that, which introduces subordinate clauses as in Ted says that the world is flat. It introduces clauses that are nearly always complements (i.e., they are required or specifically licensed by the foregoing main clause word, in this case believe). It is meaningless in its own right, and often omissible: Ted says the world is flat is a grammatical alternative. Preposing the constituent that it (i.e., shifting that and the clause it introduces to the beginning of the main clause) often sounds pretty weird: you could only use the odd sentence ??That the world is flat, Ted says in certain special contexts where different things Ted says are being contrasted with one another.
None of this holds for because, as seen in sentences like Ted is ridiculed because he holds ridiculous beliefs. It introduces constituents that are never complements: they are always optional adjuncts (*Ted says because the world is flat is not grammatical at all unless you understand it elliptically with something missing after the verb says, so that the meaning is "Ted says it is because the world is flat"). It is not meaningless, but contributes a crucial logical relation of cause or reason. It can never be omitted without radical change to the meaning and usually the grammatical permissibility of the sentence (*Ted is ridiculed he holds ridiculous beliefs is not grammatical). And shifting it to the front is perfectly normal: Because he holds ridiculous beliefs, Ted is ridiculed is perfectly normal in lots of contexts.
The classic "coordinating conjunction" is and, which introduces non-initial parts of coordinate constituents as in Roses are red and violets are blue. Switching the positions of the two clauses separated by the and normally gives a grammatical result with the same truth conditions: Violets are blue and roses are red is true if and only if Roses are red and violets are blue is true. Preposing the and plus what follows it is not permitted: *And violets are blue, roses are red is totally ungrammatical.
The opposite of all of this holds for because. The sentence Roses are red because violets are blue may express a strange claim, but it has a completely different meaning from Violets are blue because roses are red (the causal arrow is reversed in direction). And Because violets are blue, roses are red is a grammatical alternative way of expressing the same thing as Roses are red because violets are blue.
Why do all dictionaries make the self-evidently false claim that because is a "conjunction" and thus either like that or like and? In short, they are all lazy followers of a stupid tradition that has needed rethinking for 200 years (some would say it's more like 2,000 years, because it originates in classical times). They are locked into system of respecting ancient an analysis that doesn't work. It is based on the vague notion of joining: a "conjunction" is supposed to be a word that "joins" two elements together. Very little thought is required to see that if using C to "join" A together with B means simply forming the sequence "A C B" then almost anything can be called a "conjunction"; and no stricter and more tightly framed definition has been given.
That brings us to the similarly brainless claim that there is a preposition spelled because of. I'm not going to say that the dictionary should never recognize something as a word if it has a space in it; I think Santa Cruz is best thought of as a word, and there may be space-containing words that are not proper nouns. But because of isn't one of them. I don't need to go into any elaborate arguments to convince you of this. I simply searched the Wall Street Journal corpus (44 million words from the late 1980s that has served as a convenient testbed for all sorts of computational linguistic experiments over the past twenty years), looking for cases of because and of with some stuff in between. Within half a second my laptop provided these results:
If among the intellectual beliefs of Latin America the idea of democracy itself is so denigrated, it is because, in great part, of our public universities.
Higher-priced goods were the best sellers in lines ranging from toys to apparel, partly because, some retailers thought, of the new tax law, which will eliminate deductions for sales taxes beginning next year.
Chavez was more restrained this time because, he later revealed, of a rib injury suffered sparring at promoter Don King's famous, $1,000-a-day Cleveland training lair six weeks ago.
"I want to avoid saying Europe is a role model for North America," says Robert C. Stempel, who won the president's job at GM last May because, it is widely believed, of the company's improvement overseas.
These don't just have words and spaces in between because and of; they actually have commas in there. Do you want to posit words in the dictionary that have commas and spaces and sequences of three or four words inside them? Do you want to propose that the dictionary should include not just the one word because of but several million others like because, some retailers thought, of and because, it is widely believed, of? If you do, you're a fruitcake, and I'm not addressing you. If you are a Language Log reader you will see what I mean. There is no preposition because of; these are two separate words, with their own functions, capable of being widely separated by other words.
Of, naturally, is a preposition. It is the commonest and most stereotypical of all prepositions in English. It heads preposition phrases (PPs) like of our public universities. So what should we say about because? Contrary to all the dictionaries, it is a preposition. As its complement (the phrase that follows it to complete the PP) it may take either a clause (as in the PP because he holds ridiculous beliefs) or a PP with of as its head (as in the PP because of our public universities). Some prepositions can occur with no complement (as in We went in), some require an NP (as of does) some require a clause (as although does), and some require a PP (like out in those uses that do not involve exiting from delimited regions of space: notice that They did it out of ignorance is grammatical but *They did it out ignorance is not).
The change that has caught the eye of the American Dialect Society is simply that it has picked up the extra privilege already possessed by prepositions like of: it now allows a noun phrase (NP) as complement. So in the following table of prepositions (in red) and their complement categories (in blue), a single entry has been changed (✓ means `grammatically permitted', * means `grammatically forbidden'):
nothing
NP
of-PP
Clause
in
✓
✓
*
*
out
✓
%
%
*
since
✓
✓
*
✓
of
*
✓
*
*
because
*
*
✓
✓
The language has simply added to its stock of grammatical possibilities (as it can, because syntax) a single check mark, replacing the second asterisk in the last row.
It's the American Dialect Society's grammatical check mark of the year.
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