"to begin/start (off) with" as an adverbial/discourse connective

[nschneid]

https://universal.grew.fr/?custom=6564a7ec3f974:

• That was 80 weeks to begin with, and there were other training periods thrown in as well.
• Their service sucks to start off with, people are cruel and ignorant.
• the bartenders/waitresses definately need to be re-trained (if they ever had any to begin with)

This attaches as advcl. I guess the most interesting thing about this idiom is the stranded preposition. In all three cases "with" is tagged as ADP and attached as obl. Unlike productive uses of stranding ("this is a good song to begin the program with"), in the idiom there is not really an understood nominal marked by the preposition. But that's OK I guess.

[nschneid]

Another odd idiom with preposition stranding is "go-to", as in "the best go-to burger place on the East Bay".