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How do you think they were categorized and named in the first place? They were named by someone studying the language, examining how it works, and making a deci

How do you think they were categorized and named in the first place? They were named by someone studying the language, examining how it works, and making a decision. Well, I'm studying the language, examining how this construct works, and making a decision. Did you know that there are some people that classify German as an SOV language? It actually makes a lot of sense in analysis; it drastically simplifies the otherwise complex rules around German verb placement. However, it takes the ability to step aside for a moment. To look at the common case (V2) and call it an exception. Well, reformulating "stand for" as a transitive verb also simplifies the rules. It does even more; it takes a very common construction ("dangling preposition") and not only explains it, but makes it perfectly grammatical. There's been a huge movement in linguistics away from what has been called "prescriptivism" towards "descriptivism". That is, that the users of a language are the ones who determine what is correct, and the best a linguist can do is take those constructs and describe them. Your approach to my comments so far has been extremely prescriptivist; that this construct has these words and therefore should be formed that way. And you do this in light of the fact that these types of constructions are extremely common and perfectly well understood. So I ask you, is grammar meant to be a description of the way a language works, or is it meant to be a prescription of the way a language is supposed to work? Because all you've given me is the latter, while I'm attempting to show you the former. And if you believe the latter, then I already know that we will not come to terms because we are at philosophical odds with each other.

eridius 9y ago
> Your approach to my comments so far has been extremely prescriptivist Not at all correct. We're not talking about the correct way to form sentences. If I was saying "it's incorrect to have a dangling preposition" then I would be prescriptivist. But I'm not. What I am doing is telling you that you cannot simply reclassify one element of grammar as something else in order to pretend that there's no difference. Because there absolutely is a difference between prepositional phrasal verbs and particle phrasal verbs, both in how they're defined and how they're used. "stand up" and "stand for" are grammatically different, and pretending they're the same is simply wrong. I don't understand why you keep ignoring this, since I've said it several times. And your attempt to paint this as prescriptivism vs descriptivism is a straw man.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  That's not what a strawman is. I never said that such a view was wrong; I said that it was a philosophical point over which we would not be able to agree. Note that I was not directing the argument to something I could knock down; I was trying to identify a potentially terminal issue and "agree to disagree". I was also communicating my view of what was happening. And I'm glad I did, because you are correct and it was a mistaken view. You never implied "dangling prepositions" as a problem; that was something I had in my head which you hadn't said. In the end, I think we are stuck in a hole that Wikipedia actually summarizes quite nicely, so I'll just quote it here. The topic is the use of the terminology "phrasal verb", emphasis is all original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_ter... "The value of this choice and its alternatives (including separable verb for Germanic languages) is debatable. In origin the concept is based on translation linguistics; as many single-word English and Latinate words are translatable by a phrasal verb complex in English, therefore the logic is that the phrasal verb complex must be a complete semantic unit in itself. One should consider in this regard that the actual term phrasal verb suggests that such constructions should form phrases. In most cases however, they clearly do not form phrases. Hence the very term phrasal verb is misleading and a source of confusion, which has motivated some to reject the term outright." I think I'm sitting squarely in the latter camp described above. My analysis is that these are not phrasal at all, and so I think that's where this debate is actually sitting. (And conveniently, that quote also directly indicates Germanic separable verbs as alternative terminology.) So, to summarize, I think this is one of those fine times (that seems to happen so often on the Internet) where we saw some sort of disagreement, but were really agreeing on everything but terminology.
  - eridius 9y ago
    It's a straw man because it wasn't actually my argument at all. You declared my argument to be something it wasn't, then said you disagree with the straw argument (which is another way to say you think it's wrong). That said, the rest of your comment is quite reasonable and I'm content to let this be. I'm not entirely convinced that the only thing we disagree on is terminology, but it's certainly possible, and I don't think we need to waste any more air in figuring that out.

eridius 9y ago

> Your approach to my comments so far has been extremely prescriptivist Not at all correct. We're not talking about the correct way to form sentences. If I was saying "it's incorrect to have a dangling preposition" then I would be prescriptivist. But I'm not. What I am doing is telling you that you cannot simply reclassify one element of grammar as something else in order to pretend that there's no difference. Because there absolutely is a difference between prepositional phrasal verbs and particle phrasal verbs, both in how they're defined and how they're used. "stand up" and "stand for" are grammatically different, and pretending they're the same is simply wrong. I don't understand why you keep ignoring this, since I've said it several times. And your attempt to paint this as prescriptivism vs descriptivism is a straw man.

jdmichal 9y ago
That's not what a strawman is. I never said that such a view was wrong; I said that it was a philosophical point over which we would not be able to agree. Note that I was not directing the argument to something I could knock down; I was trying to identify a potentially terminal issue and "agree to disagree". I was also communicating my view of what was happening. And I'm glad I did, because you are correct and it was a mistaken view. You never implied "dangling prepositions" as a problem; that was something I had in my head which you hadn't said. In the end, I think we are stuck in a hole that Wikipedia actually summarizes quite nicely, so I'll just quote it here. The topic is the use of the terminology "phrasal verb", emphasis is all original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_ter... "The value of this choice and its alternatives (including separable verb for Germanic languages) is debatable. In origin the concept is based on translation linguistics; as many single-word English and Latinate words are translatable by a phrasal verb complex in English, therefore the logic is that the phrasal verb complex must be a complete semantic unit in itself. One should consider in this regard that the actual term phrasal verb suggests that such constructions should form phrases. In most cases however, they clearly do not form phrases. Hence the very term phrasal verb is misleading and a source of confusion, which has motivated some to reject the term outright." I think I'm sitting squarely in the latter camp described above. My analysis is that these are not phrasal at all, and so I think that's where this debate is actually sitting. (And conveniently, that quote also directly indicates Germanic separable verbs as alternative terminology.) So, to summarize, I think this is one of those fine times (that seems to happen so often on the Internet) where we saw some sort of disagreement, but were really agreeing on everything but terminology.
- eridius 9y ago
  It's a straw man because it wasn't actually my argument at all. You declared my argument to be something it wasn't, then said you disagree with the straw argument (which is another way to say you think it's wrong). That said, the rest of your comment is quite reasonable and I'm content to let this be. I'm not entirely convinced that the only thing we disagree on is terminology, but it's certainly possible, and I don't think we need to waste any more air in figuring that out.