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Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

From:David Barrow <davidab@...>
Date:Sunday, June 20, 2004, 19:36
Andreas Johansson wrote:

>Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>: > > > >>Christophe Grandsire said: >> >> >>>In Dutch, there is a strong ban against using prepositions with the neuter >>>personal pronoun ("het": it) and neuter demonstrative pronouns ("dit": >>>this >>>and "dat": that). You cannot have phrases like *"aan het": to it, *"op >>>dit": on this or *"met dat": with that. So what do you do? Simple: you >>>replace the pronoun with its corresponding spatial adverb ("er" for "het", >>>"hier" for "dit" and "daar" for "dat". "hier" and "daar" are obvious >>>cognates of "here" and "there", and "er" is used in "er is": "there is") >>>and you *suffix* it the preposition. So you get "eraan": to it, "hierop": >>>on this, and "daarmee": with that >>> >>> >>And to think that I've been mixing up "suffix" and "prefix" for decades. >> >>I'm glad I wasn't explaining this, because I'm sure I would have screwed >>up and said that "er", "hier" and "daar" are *prefixed" to the >>prepositions. (Actually, I might have *REALLY* screwed up and called them >>clitics, and not affixes at all.) >> >> > >The way I read Christophe's post, he's saying that the preposition is suffixed >to the pronominal element. I'm not 100% clear how that differs from prefixing >the pronominal element to the preposition. I'm sure you can enlighten me. > > Andreas > >
Since the adverb and the preposition are independent words in their own right wouldn't words like 'hierop' 'damit' 'thereby' more accurately be described as compound words and the two words are joined rather than one suffixed or the other prefixed. David Barrow

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>