ENGLISH PLAIN & SIMPLE

Here’s an interesting question about preposition usage from a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha:

“Last week, I came across this sentence in a BBC story: ‘When the house caught fire, people jumped out of windows in a desperate attempt to save their lives.’ My reaction has been that the sentence misapplies the preposition ‘out of’, and I would suggest that it be replaced by another preposition—‘through.’ Am I correct thinking that way?”
My reply to Mwita Chacha:

I think the BBC’s use of the verb phrase “jumped out of windows” in that sentence is perfectly grammatical and idiomatic. “To jump out of something” is to leap from something, often as an act of panic or desperation. In that sentence, we get the sense that when the house was on fire, people clambered up to the window ledges, stood there momentarily, then jumped.

That same sense of urgency and peril is evoked by the use of “to jump out of” in this lead sentence of a news story: “Two people were arrested after they jumped out of an SUV that crashed while trying to avoid a traffic stop.” In milder form, that sense of making haste to avoid an undesirable or unpleasant outcome is also evident in the phrase “jump out of” in this sentence: “That day of my job interview, I jumped out of bed when the alarm clock rang.”

And, of course, the sense of going from a bad situation to an even worse one is captured by the verb phrase “jump out of” in the idiomatic expression “to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.” It should then be clear by now that the BBC story had not misapplied the preposition “out of” in its use of the phrase “jumped out of windows.”

At any rate, let’s consider your suggestion that in that sentence, “out of” be replaced by “through”: “When the house caught fire, people jumped through windows in a desperate attempt to save their lives.” Does that sentence still convey the same sense intended by the original?

Grammatically and semantically, there’d be nothing wrong with that sentence if, in fact, that was what the people in that burning house actually did in their effort to save themselves. But I would say that under such circumstances, the act of “jumping through windows” is highly unlikely. It evokes an irrational and illogical picture—that of people making a dash from somewhere inside the house for a quick, unthinking jump right through the window without even considering the risk and consequences of doing so. Even for people under such terrible duress, that kind of behavior is highly improbable. People will jump through a hoop for the thrill of doing it, and they would jump through a road barrier if they think it’s not too high to cause a bad fall, but they won’t jump through the window of a burning house without first assuring themselves that they won’t be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.

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And here’s another interesting grammar question, this time from new Forum member Rezassp:
“In this sentence, ‘Living abroad can be an educational experience,’ it seems that the adverb ‘abroad’ modifies the gerund ‘living’? If that’s correct, can we say that gerunds can be modified by adverbs?”

My reply to Rezassp:
Yes, the word “living” in that sentence is indeed a gerund, but the word “abroad” that modifies it isn’t an adverb but an adjective denoting a state of living rather than the act of living. But even if a gerund functions as a noun, it can also be modified by an adverb when the modification denotes the manner of the action—the verb aspect—contained in the gerund, as in this sentence: “Living ostentatiously can ruin one’s finances.”

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum at http://josecarilloforum.com. Follow me at Twitter.com @J8Carillo.

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