Re: OT: Who said it?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
> Interesting. Is that illustrated by the fact that you can substitute
> "abide" (no preposition) for "put up with"? On the other hand, "get a
> kick out of" seems to call for a preposition, as long as you keep the
> passive voice: "get enjoyment from" or "get enjoyment from."
No, it isn't the existence of the one-word synonym.
It's rather a result of English's being, in its
structure at least, a Germanic language. Both Germanic
and romance languages employ prefixes and suffixes to
form new words, but German at least has two different
systems when forming verbs with "prefixes": some
prefixes are separable: in certain syntactic
situations, the "prefix" is transposed from the
beginning of the verb and placed at the end of the
expression. Thus the verb for "to close" (e.g., a door)
is zumachen. But if you want to ask someone to close
the door, please, you would say "Machen sie dir Tür zu,
bitte" (Literally, Make You the door to, please.)
I was once trying to explain why the "Never end a
sentence with a preposition" rule is rather a
superstition, and recalled that bit of German syntax.
It cast considerable light on the English pattern:
certain apparent "prepositions" in English are parts of
what are called phrasal verbs, and those verbs appear
to operate much as verbs with separable prefixes do in
German (except that in English the "prefix" always
trails the verb): to lay out, to bring up, to put down,
to make up (in any of several senses), to go over, and
dozens of others are not verbs plus prepositions, but
phrasal verbs, and in many cases attempting to avoid
the final placement of the adverbial element would
result in balderdash: "why did you have to up that
bring?" (Anybody here know Dutch? That is closer to
English than German is, and I would be curious to know
if there is any support for this thesis in Dutch syntax.)
On the other hand, many adverbs in English function
much as inseparable prefixes do in German, and such an
adverb often must go between the "to" and the rest of
the infinitive; "thoroughly" (which in German often is
represented by a new verb beginning "ver-") is one
such. "They were unable to thoroughly resolve the
complex problems that..." Where else could you put
"thoroughly"? If you plunk it down between "unable" and
"to", it squints: does it modify "unable" or "resolve"?
"To resolve thoroughly the complex problems" is not
English. We don't normally separate finite action verbs
from their objects; no one would write or say, "We must
resolve throughly the problems." And the defining
relative clause beginning "that" must come right after
its antecedent.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx