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> The article made that quite clear. On the subject of dangling prepositions, it said there were only 2 other languages besides English that allowed them (an in

> The article made that quite clear. On the subject of dangling prepositions, it said there were only 2 other languages besides English that allowed them (an indigenous language in Mexico and one in Siberia). Which is not the complete story, at all. English "dangling" prepositions are a direct lineage from Germanic separable verbs, which also still exist in at least German and Dutch. Ich fahre jetzt ab. -- The "ab" is a preposition, just kind of hanging out at the end of the sentence. It is, in fact, part of the verb, where "ab·fahren" means "to leave". The example given, "Which town do you come from?", could be analyzed as exactly analogous, where the verb is actually "to come from".

eridius 9y ago
> where the verb is actually "to come from". I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and you can't simply declare that it is. Also FWIW, upon re-reading the article, it says Danish actually also has this (more specifically, it said Old Norse allowed for this, "which Danish retains"). So I guess it's 4 languages, not 3. Not that that really makes any difference here, since the whole point is that dangling prepositions are rather exceptional and nearly all languages don't allow them.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  > I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and you can't simply declare that it is. "ab·fahren" is analyzed as a verb in German, even though it is clearly a verb with a detachable prepositional particle which modifies that verb. Let's look at some English examples: stand up, stand out, stand in, stand down, stand by, stand back, stand for These all have drastically different meanings from both each other and from the verb "stand". I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be analyzed as individual verbs, same as the German ones. Do you have an actual reasoning behind not analyzing them in that way? And this isn't just some strange idea that I, random internet person, am spouting either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_Engl...
  - eridius 9y ago
    For all of your examples except "stand for", you have a verb and an adverbial particle. "stand for" (and "come from") is a verb and a preposition. So all of your examples except for "stand for" are already something different. For example, with "come from", "where did you come from?" is the same as "from where did you come?", but there's no equivalent with e.g. "stand up". And conversely, you can "screw things up", but you can't "come <object> from". Anyway, simply put, they aren't verbs. They're "phrasal verbs". Or more specifically, most of them are particle phrasal verbs, and two (stand for and come from) are prepositional phrasal verbs. And you can't just pretend they're the same thing as normal verbs. The Wikipedia page also says particle phrasal verbs (e.g. "stand in") are in the same general category as the separable verbs of other Germanic languages, the implication here being that prepositional phrasal verbs aren't. And in the link you provided, it explicitly says adverbial particles can be separated from the verb. So the point here is that ab·fahren is analogous to particle phrasal verbs in English, and not to prepositional phrasal verbs. So it's like "stand up", but it's not like "come from".
    - jdmichal 9y ago
      I think this is all your interpretation of how to analyze these entities. I mean, I could just as easily call German separable verbs "particle phrasal verbs", but they are still analyzed as a single lexical entity. I don't see how you can treat the English examples any differently, given that they are basically idiomatic combinations. And the defining point of an idiomatic expression is that it must be analyzed as a singular entity with its own distinct meaning.
      - eridius 9y ago
        > I mean, I could just as easily call German separable verbs "particle phrasal verbs" Not really, because particle phrasal verbs exists primarily in English, with apparently a small handful of occurrences in some Romance languages (such as Lombard or Italian). Your argument is basically "if I call this one thing by another name, I can pretend it's actually something else", but you can't actually do that because that's complete nonsense.

eridius 9y ago

> where the verb is actually "to come from". I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and you can't simply declare that it is. Also FWIW, upon re-reading the article, it says Danish actually also has this (more specifically, it said Old Norse allowed for this, "which Danish retains"). So I guess it's 4 languages, not 3. Not that that really makes any difference here, since the whole point is that dangling prepositions are rather exceptional and nearly all languages don't allow them.

jdmichal 9y ago
> I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and you can't simply declare that it is. "ab·fahren" is analyzed as a verb in German, even though it is clearly a verb with a detachable prepositional particle which modifies that verb. Let's look at some English examples: stand up, stand out, stand in, stand down, stand by, stand back, stand for These all have drastically different meanings from both each other and from the verb "stand". I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be analyzed as individual verbs, same as the German ones. Do you have an actual reasoning behind not analyzing them in that way? And this isn't just some strange idea that I, random internet person, am spouting either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_Engl...
- eridius 9y ago
  For all of your examples except "stand for", you have a verb and an adverbial particle. "stand for" (and "come from") is a verb and a preposition. So all of your examples except for "stand for" are already something different. For example, with "come from", "where did you come from?" is the same as "from where did you come?", but there's no equivalent with e.g. "stand up". And conversely, you can "screw things up", but you can't "come <object> from". Anyway, simply put, they aren't verbs. They're "phrasal verbs". Or more specifically, most of them are particle phrasal verbs, and two (stand for and come from) are prepositional phrasal verbs. And you can't just pretend they're the same thing as normal verbs. The Wikipedia page also says particle phrasal verbs (e.g. "stand in") are in the same general category as the separable verbs of other Germanic languages, the implication here being that prepositional phrasal verbs aren't. And in the link you provided, it explicitly says adverbial particles can be separated from the verb. So the point here is that ab·fahren is analogous to particle phrasal verbs in English, and not to prepositional phrasal verbs. So it's like "stand up", but it's not like "come from".
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    I think this is all your interpretation of how to analyze these entities. I mean, I could just as easily call German separable verbs "particle phrasal verbs", but they are still analyzed as a single lexical entity. I don't see how you can treat the English examples any differently, given that they are basically idiomatic combinations. And the defining point of an idiomatic expression is that it must be analyzed as a singular entity with its own distinct meaning.
    - eridius 9y ago
      > I mean, I could just as easily call German separable verbs "particle phrasal verbs" Not really, because particle phrasal verbs exists primarily in English, with apparently a small handful of occurrences in some Romance languages (such as Lombard or Italian). Your argument is basically "if I call this one thing by another name, I can pretend it's actually something else", but you can't actually do that because that's complete nonsense.