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> Prepositions claim different areas of ‘cognitive space’ in English and German The thing about pre/postpositions is, their use is almost entirely idiomatic in

by aasasd 8y ago

> Prepositions claim different areas of ‘cognitive space’ in English and German The thing about pre/postpositions is, their use is almost entirely idiomatic in modern language, i.e. it doesn't follow from the meaning of individual parts and thus doesn't translate without reconstruction. In English, afaict, practically all adpositions signify relations in space or time, plus there are ‘of’ and ‘for.’ However, once you begin dealing with even slightly more abstract notions, these semantics break―and you just have to pick a word that you will use, without ties to its meaning. “The paper is on the table” is straightforward, as it uses the original meaning of ‘on,’ but you can't say why it's “We speak in English” and not e.g. ‘under English.’ So, German and other languages simply picked different words: it's not like you can complain that some inherent semantics are violated by that. It's pretty much the same in e.g. Russian with prefixes, since many of them also originally denote spatial relations, and this derivation with prefixes is used in much the same way as with adpositions in English. (Speaking ‘in English’ is actually something like ‘along-English’ in Russian.) But, English also has a habit of forming piles of new idiomatic phrases, with completely different meaning, by adding postpositions, in the same entirely arbitrary way―which makes learning these phrases an ordeal.

repsilat 8y ago
Right. In HTTP on TCP over IP? Speaking "on" English doesn't seem so strange if we can talk over (i.e. through) the radio. And English gets so much less reasonable. "Put up" is to house, "put down" is to insult, "put up with" is to suffer, "put through" is to test, "put around" is to spread, "put in" to contribute, "put out" to have sex or produce, "put over" either to delay or to decieve, "put past" to offer, "put on" to act or wear or present, "put off" to delay or dissuade, "put away" to tidy or eat or earn, "put aside" to save or to forgive, "put forth" to suggest, "put back" to replace.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  Yeah, phrasal verbs (verb-particle combinations) are almost entirely idiomatic. At least as a non-native learner, I've found it best to memorize them as units and not to even think about what the adposition would mean affixed to a noun, and that's how they were taught as well.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    That's the only way to memorize them, since they constitute essentially new words, with distinct meanings―same as any idioms.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > In HTTP on TCP over IP? I think I would use over for all of those. Is that wrong? And English phrasal verbs aren't really different from German verbs with separable prefixes. I agree though that it's one of the harder parts of the language.
  - repsilat 8y ago
    > I think I would use over for all of those. Is that wrong? You're probably right, I should have tried harder to find a better example. The "on" doesn't sound too awkward to me, though, and I might say it just to avoid saying "over" three times in a row.
- chousuke 8y ago
  As a non-native speaker, over the radio makes sense to me because in that case the radio is the medium that carries your speech. It's "in" English because that's the "encoding" of your message. You would then transmit it possibly on a vehicle at some physical location. so... HTTP over TCP over IP sounds most natural to me, though I guess HTTP on TCP works too.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    Of course they sorta make sense, people wouldn't use completely bogus prepositions (at least mostly wouldn't). They're still arbitrary, though: why is it not ‘with English’ and ‘with radio,’ since both denote usage? And, as previously said, other languages have chosen different prepositions: e.g. in Russian, both happen to use ‘по’, which means something like ‘sliding along’ or ‘moving on.’
- repsilat 8y ago
  (Ah dang, "put together" is to construct, "put out" also to extinguish, and to be put out is also to be disappointed... I'm not going to add to the list.)
akvadrako 8y ago
This is why Esperanto has je, which can replace any other preposition and remain grammatically correct, albeit more ambiguous. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/je#Esperanto https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/je#Esperanto
- aasasd 8y ago
  I wonder if Lojban or any of similar languages have taken a stance against this encroachment of old physical descriptors on newer abstract meanings. Though I guess it's impossible to foresee what kinds of relations will need to be denoted in the future.

by aasasd 8y ago

repsilat 8y ago

Right. In HTTP on TCP over IP? Speaking "on" English doesn't seem so strange if we can talk over (i.e. through) the radio. And English gets so much less reasonable. "Put up" is to house, "put down" is to insult, "put up with" is to suffer, "put through" is to test, "put around" is to spread, "put in" to contribute, "put out" to have sex or produce, "put over" either to delay or to decieve, "put past" to offer, "put on" to act or wear or present, "put off" to delay or dissuade, "put away" to tidy or eat or earn, "put aside" to save or to forgive, "put forth" to suggest, "put back" to replace.

Sharlin 8y ago
Yeah, phrasal verbs (verb-particle combinations) are almost entirely idiomatic. At least as a non-native learner, I've found it best to memorize them as units and not to even think about what the adposition would mean affixed to a noun, and that's how they were taught as well.
- aasasd 8y ago
  That's the only way to memorize them, since they constitute essentially new words, with distinct meanings―same as any idioms.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
> In HTTP on TCP over IP? I think I would use over for all of those. Is that wrong? And English phrasal verbs aren't really different from German verbs with separable prefixes. I agree though that it's one of the harder parts of the language.
- repsilat 8y ago
  > I think I would use over for all of those. Is that wrong? You're probably right, I should have tried harder to find a better example. The "on" doesn't sound too awkward to me, though, and I might say it just to avoid saying "over" three times in a row.
chousuke 8y ago
As a non-native speaker, over the radio makes sense to me because in that case the radio is the medium that carries your speech. It's "in" English because that's the "encoding" of your message. You would then transmit it possibly on a vehicle at some physical location. so... HTTP over TCP over IP sounds most natural to me, though I guess HTTP on TCP works too.
- aasasd 8y ago
  Of course they sorta make sense, people wouldn't use completely bogus prepositions (at least mostly wouldn't). They're still arbitrary, though: why is it not ‘with English’ and ‘with radio,’ since both denote usage? And, as previously said, other languages have chosen different prepositions: e.g. in Russian, both happen to use ‘по’, which means something like ‘sliding along’ or ‘moving on.’
repsilat 8y ago
(Ah dang, "put together" is to construct, "put out" also to extinguish, and to be put out is also to be disappointed... I'm not going to add to the list.)

akvadrako 8y ago

This is why Esperanto has je, which can replace any other preposition and remain grammatically correct, albeit more ambiguous. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/je#Esperanto https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/je#Esperanto

aasasd 8y ago
I wonder if Lojban or any of similar languages have taken a stance against this encroachment of old physical descriptors on newer abstract meanings. Though I guess it's impossible to foresee what kinds of relations will need to be denoted in the future.