4 ms·

Phrasal verbs are indivisible in terms of their meaning, though, just like any other word. Aren't all verbs with no spaces also arbitrary? One must simply commi

Phrasal verbs are indivisible in terms of their meaning, though, just like any other word. Aren't all verbs with no spaces also arbitrary? One must simply commit to memory. The hard part is avoiding the temptation of assuming constituent words determine the meaning precisely - a mistake you'd likely not make with an idiom or even an unassuming compound noun.

eythian 6y ago
The harder thing with them is that the parts can be in different places in the sentence. "Clean up your room", "Clean your room up." Note: Dutch does it worse (IMbiasedO, as a native English speaker learning it), where they're actually one word (like it were "upclean"), but the front part can break off and float to the end of the sentence much of the time.
- vinay427 6y ago
  Yep. German, which I'm learning, also unsurprisingly has this. I don't know that it's appreciably more difficult than the English two-word compounding given that the preposition can move around in all of these languages. I think it actually makes the conjugation of verbs, which have more endings at least in German, a bit more consistent.
- BerislavLopac 6y ago
  > "Clean up your room", "Clean your room up." I've noticed (although can't remember an example right now) that sometimes the sentence can have a slightly different meaning if the preposition goes to the end. Another thing with English is that the word order is very important as it conveys a lot of meaning; in, for example, Slavic languages it is less critical as meaning relies heavily on various word forms.
  - apocolyps6 6y ago
    But doesn't using non-standard word order in Slavic languages shift the emphasis?
    - BerislavLopac 6y ago
      I'm not familiar with all of them, but for the ones I am that shift is, at worst, very mild. The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night. To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"

eythian 6y ago

The harder thing with them is that the parts can be in different places in the sentence. "Clean up your room", "Clean your room up." Note: Dutch does it worse (IMbiasedO, as a native English speaker learning it), where they're actually one word (like it were "upclean"), but the front part can break off and float to the end of the sentence much of the time.

vinay427 6y ago
Yep. German, which I'm learning, also unsurprisingly has this. I don't know that it's appreciably more difficult than the English two-word compounding given that the preposition can move around in all of these languages. I think it actually makes the conjugation of verbs, which have more endings at least in German, a bit more consistent.
BerislavLopac 6y ago
> "Clean up your room", "Clean your room up." I've noticed (although can't remember an example right now) that sometimes the sentence can have a slightly different meaning if the preposition goes to the end. Another thing with English is that the word order is very important as it conveys a lot of meaning; in, for example, Slavic languages it is less critical as meaning relies heavily on various word forms.
- apocolyps6 6y ago
  But doesn't using non-standard word order in Slavic languages shift the emphasis?
  - BerislavLopac 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with all of them, but for the ones I am that shift is, at worst, very mild. The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night. To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"