Arrive AT or Arrive TO?

Maybe tomorrow I'll make it into my office and look in my Benson Benson & Ibsen Dictionary of Word Combinations.

MGibster said:

This might me one of the few threads where we’ve all arrived to the same conclusion. Its so beautiful I’m crying tears of joy.

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You mean arrived at the same conclusion, right, right.

I would never say got/get/gotten at, such as; when did you get to the party.

MGibster said:

This might me one of the few threads where we’ve all arrived to the same conclusion. Its so beautiful I’m crying tears of joy.

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Hold up, I got this...

The only reason that everyone here is in agreement is because ENWorld is primarily a D&D site that uses the English language. As such, people are stuck in group-think because of trad monolingual ideologies that have been used since the days of Chainmail. Some have even brought up some interesting neotrad bilingual ideas. But everyone is stuck in CFS (Cultural, Functional, Structual) Theory that we all discussed decades ago. People really need to get out from under the rock of historical vernacularism and embrace new lingual ideas.

No one in this thread is talking about posttrad lexical concepts. In the context of new fourth-person conjugations of sacred-cow idioms like "arrive", it's totally possible to embrace phraseology like "arrive to". In modern languange design, there's no need for any word to be defined as a predicate or a subject. Any verb can be conjugated by its own internal goals, which means they are also free to decide their own prepositions.

I usually think "Arrive AT" a location; however, I think "arrived to" feels okay if I follow it by a verb.

I arrived AT the soup kitchen to serve hot meals.
I arrived TO serve hot meals at the soup kitchen.

(Yes, I am aware both "AT" and "TO" appear in both sentences above; I suspect the emphasis on the location or the verb is what makes each "feel" natural to order them in the way they appear).

The Sigil said:

I usually think "Arrive AT" a location; however, I think "arrived to" feels okay if I follow it by a verb.

I arrived AT the soup kitchen to serve hot meals.
I arrived TO serve hot meals at the soup kitchen.

(Yes, I am aware both "AT" and "TO" appear in both sentences above; I suspect the emphasis on the location or the verb is what makes each "feel" natural to order them in the way they appear).

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The reason you end up with 'arrive to' in that sentence though isn't because you're using it instead of 'arrive at'. There's 3 parts to that sentence that you can put in any order potentially. There's 'I arrived', there's 'At the soup kitchen', and there's 'To serve hot meals'.

In your second sentence you 'arrived -- to serve...' not 'arrived to -- serve'.

It's technically just as correct to say 'At the soup kitchen I arrived to serve hot meals', and also 'To serve hot meals, I arrived at the soup kitchen'.

Those are certainly harder to parse than both the ones in your post and the most standard version grammatically-speaking is 'I arrived at the soup kitchen to serve hot meals'.

Anyway, 'Arrived At' is for sure correct. I've got a bone to pick with the poll though sorting all English into 'American', 'Canadian', and 'Other'. The UK has a greater population than Canada and much bigger differences to American English. Australia has 26 million people and has bigger differences to American English than Canada does. Hell, India has over 100 million English speakers. Idk, it smacks me the wrong way.

“I have arrived to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.”


(Yes, I have altered the quote. Pray that I do not alter it more!)

This is gold:

"The distribution of verbs among at, to, with, of has been idiosyncratic and varied."

Deset Gled said:

Hold up, I got this...

The only reason that everyone here is in agreement is because ENWorld is primarily a D&D site that uses the English language. As such, people are stuck in group-think because of trad monolingual ideologies that have been used since the days of Chainmail. Some have even brought up some interesting neotrad bilingual ideas. But everyone is stuck in CFS (Cultural, Functional, Structual) Theory that we all discussed decades ago. People really need to get out from under the rock of historical vernacularism and embrace new lingual ideas.

No one in this thread is talking about posttrad lexical concepts. In the context of new fourth-person conjugations of sacred-cow idioms like "arrive", it's totally possible to embrace phraseology like "arrive to". In modern languange design, there's no need for any word to be defined as a predicate or a subject. Any verb can be conjugated by its own internal goals, which means they are also free to decide their own prepositions.

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A lot of big, fancy wordsmithing there. Sounds a lot like you are trying to get me to switch to the Metric System or something.

Cadence said:

I couldn't think of any, but Google found a "to" one that didn't feel odd to me:
“I arrived to the party a bit late,”

From: 'Arrive At' vs. 'Arrive To': A Very Nerdy Analysis <- a discussion of its origins and fluctuating popularity

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Yeah this is an interesting one, I don't think I've ever even heard "arrived to" outside the context of an event rather than just a place. Like arrived to the party, arrived to the concert, arrived to the car show, i.e. something that was ongoing - even then it's extremely rare, but that's not surprising given your article, which suggests the "arrived to" construction became largely obsolete by the late 20th century and I wasn't even born until 1978 which I guess is around the start of the "late" 20th century!

The Real Pixie said:

Anyway, 'Arrived At' is for sure correct. I've got a bone to pick with the poll though sorting all English into 'American', 'Canadian', and 'Other'. The UK has a greater population than Canada and much bigger differences to American English. Australia has 26 million people and has bigger differences to American English than Canada does. Hell, India has over 100 million English speakers. Idk, it smacks me the wrong way.

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The reason the Englishman who created the poll made it that way was because he didn't remember ever hearing it before, so assumed it must be foreign and his leading guess was that it was American.