One thing I've noticed about the usage of ending a sentence with a preposition is how similar the construction is to German separable verbs. With German separable verbs, the prefix is often a preposition when taken by itself, such as "mit-kommen" = accompany, but is "come with" if it's broken into parts. In a regular declarative sentence in German, this would be written with the prefix at the end, such as "Paul kommt Erich mit" = "Paul accompanies Erick."
My question is, aside from the parallel, is there an actual causal relationship here? Is the common usage of putting a preposition at the end come from an old German construction with separable verbs?
Best Answer
This won't be an answer, exactly, but more of a pointer towards other sources.
First of all, terminology. What you are talking about is called preposition stranding. It seems to be very rare (although not nonexistent) outside Germanic languages. How exactly to analyze it within Germanic languages, including whether there is a unified treatment, remains an open problem. And I will stop there, and just give a bunch of sources.
On the Linguistics Stack Exchange: What motivates/allows preposition stranding in English, but disallows it in other languages, like Mandarin?
On Wikipedia: Preposition stranding.
And then come papers and such.
This Master's thesis has a good literature review.
This book, The Germanic Languages, discusses the topic of preposition stranding.
English as North Germanic discussess it, too.
On the historical development of preposition stranding in English
Case Theory and Preposition Stranding
Early Germanic preposition stranding revisited
Preposition Stranding and Resumptivity in West Germanic
Preposition-Stranding and Passive
Preposition Stranding, Passivisation, and Extraction from Adjuncts in Germanic
And many more.