Learn English – “I remember the advice he gave to me” Why add preposition to

While subject-verb is the more natural order for English, the inversion to verb-subject can be used in certain situations. To better understand this, consider these sentences, all of which could be considered valid (some more acceptable than others):

• S1: John jumps as high as Jim jumps high. (This is technically valid grammar but not acceptable style. Compare with the more valid style of "John jumps as high vertically as Jim jumps horizontally".)
• S2: John jumps as high as Jim jumps.
• S3: John jumps as high as Jim does.
• S4: John jumps as high as does Jim.
• S5: John jumps as high as Jim.

These are ordered from S1 to S5 with increasing focus on "Jim". Note the first three are parallel constructions Noun-Verb Noun-Verb as follows:

Noun1-VerbPhrase1 as Noun2-Verb2.
Part1 as Part2.

Even within a parallel construction, S3 is better than S2 which is better than S1 because each is better at helping the reader to focus on the only important information in Part2 which is Noun2 (Noun2=Jim). Since it's a parallel construction, the only difference is Noun2, and anything that distracts from that would make reading the sentence more difficult.

In contrast, S4 distracts the reader because "does Jim" is grammatically more awkward (in English) than "Jim does".

S5 ("Noun1-VerbPhrase1 as Noun2") could be ambiguous: can John jump Jim's height? But S5 could be the most succinct given the proper context. Suppose a high-school student, John, completes a high-jump of 8 feet. A talent scount might exclaim, "Wow! John jumps as high as Javier Sotomayor!" (Sotomayor is the men's high-jump record holder of about 8 feet in 1993.)

Now consider the following sentences, all of which could be considered valid (some more acceptable than others):

• S1': Objective-C supports the same conventions for specifying strings as C supports conventions for specifying strings. (Only technically valid grammar.)
• S2': Objective-C supports the same conventions for specifying strings as C supports.
• S3': Objective-C supports the same conventions for specifying strings as C does.
• S4': Objective-C supports the same conventions for specifying strings as does C.

Here, S1' demonstrates the problem with redundancy. S2' is obviously better than S1'. S3' abstracts "supports" into "does". But S4' is the best at helping the reader to focus on the only important information in Part2 which is the word "C".

The form one uses for Part2 depends the length and complexity of Part1. Very simple sentences can be formed with the parallel noun-verb noun-verb while more complex sentences may be more readable with the inversion noun-verb does-noun.

This is a very interesting example. I'll give a short answer here, and leave a full explanation to someone more familiar with the syntax of this particular verb.

Verbs often take preposition phrases as a Complement. In the active voice version of the Original Poster's sentence, we see the verb add take a Direct Object and a prepositional phrase functioning as Locative Complement:

• Someone added water [to the mixture].

In the sentence above we see water as a Direct Object, and the phrase to the mixture functioning as the Locative Complement.

Usually when we see verb plus preposition phrases like this, the preposition phrase cannot become the Subject of a passive construction. So for example if we passivise Someone slept in the bed, we get:

• The bed was slept in.

Here the Complement of the Preposition in has become the Subject of the passivised sentence. In contrast, the preposition phrase in the bed itself cannot become the Subject:

• *In the bed was slept. (ungrammatical)

This is the pattern that we generally see with such sentences. We cannot move the prepositional phrase into the Subject position. We can only move the noun phrase from within the preposition phrase. So the first examples in the following pairs of sentences are grammatical, and the second ones are not:

• The notes were referred to
• *To the notes were referred.
• The protesters were spoken to.
• *To the protesters were spoken
• The goblets were drunk out of.
• *Out of the goblets were drunk.
• The problem was looked into.
• *Into the problem was looked.

The active version of the Original Poster's example is:

• Someone added water to the mixture.

We can of course make water the Subject of a passive version of the sentence:

• Water was added to the mixture.

But we should expect to be able to make the noun phrase the mixture the Subject of a passive version of the sentence as well:

• *The mixture was added water to. (ungrammatical)

But this gives us a poor result. Very strangely, we do seem to be able to move the whole preposition phrase to the Subject position here. Many grammarians say that this is not possible. However, there is no doubt that the only viable solution to the Original Poster's malformed sentence, without moving mixture out of the Complement phrase, is to move the entire prepositional phrase into Subject position:

• To this mixture was added water.

Now, exactly why this should be possible, I have no idea. However, very strangely indeed, it actually is. Maybe someone else can explain why ...

Edit note

Rathony has suggested that maybe there is some phrase movement here. He is correct, I believe. I think my version of the sentence is actually one where the prepositional phrase has been fronted and the Subject post-posed. In other words my version of the sentence is a convoluted version of:

• To the mixture water was added.

Here the Subject of the sentence is actually, of course, water. So, this made me think that perhaps this post should be deleted. However, there still remains the puzzling question, as detailed above, of why the following isn't grammatical:

• *The mixture was added water to.

So I've turned it into a wiki instead.