Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>I'm not quite sure he invented it (in fact, he was
>from Bourgoin-Jallieu, but I said Lyons area because
>Bourgoin-Jallieu might be little known worldwide). But
>he also lived in Switzerland and sometimes refers to
>expressions used by francophone Swiss people. Thus
>maybe it is used around the French / Swiss border.
That on the other hand is possible. I met once a French-speaking Swiss 
family, and their expressions were rather strange to my ear :) . But as I 
said many times, I'm only ever talking about French of France, never about 
French spoken in other countries :) .


>Sure, there is no need, from a logical point of view,
>but the fact is sometimes you just feel like saying
>so, and you have to think for a while: "oh no, that's
>not correct, if I say 'monter', this already includes
>the idea of 'en haut'". "Monter en haut" just seems
>more expressive, instinctively, and by contrast
>"monter là-haut" is correct. Ex: "Monte là-haut, tu
>verras Montmartre".
Actually, there *is* a difference. "monter" and "en haut" both imply 
*movement* upwards (at least, "en haut" can imply movement upwards, if used 
with a verb of movement, and "monter" is a verb of movement). So you have a 
strong pleonasm, since you describe twice movement upwards. However, 
"là-haut" only indicates an upwards *position*, not *movement*. So there's 
no pleonasm there.

>  If one wanted to be completely
>logical, one should just say "Monte là", because
>"haut" is already expressed by "monter".
For me, "monte là" would indicate a medium high position, while "monte 
là-haut" indicates the highest position available. So in cases where only 
one high position is available, I agree that they would mean the same 
thing, but if there were more than one high position available, they wouldn't.

>  But "monter
>là-haut" is admitted, while "monter en haut" is not.
>Thus maybe the confusion.
Well, according to my analysis (which fits the way I've always used the 
expression), there's no confusion. The two things are not comparable.
______________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Ray Brown :


>We were not even taught that! We were taught that the 'dangling
>prepositions' (I don't think it was called that, but that's what was meant)
>  was a feature of English that made it different from its near continental
>cousins. The sentence often quoted was Churchill's (apocryphal?) "..a rule
>up with which I will not put" to show how silly it was to be over-pedantic.
Well, I hate to disagree with you, but dangling prepositions are *not* a 
feature that makes English different from its near continental cousins. 
There is at least one other Germanic language that has dangling 
prepositions, and we all ought to know it, since it's the official language 
of this mailing list! ;)

Yeah, that's right, Dutch has dangling prepositions, and I'm gonna explain 
how they work :) .

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 (as you see, some prepositions change 
form when they are suffixed. "met" becomes "mee"). As you saw with "met": 
with, it needn't be used only with spatial prepositions.

Now, the cool thing about those forms is that they are *separable*, i.e. 
you can separate the adverb from its suffixed preposition, and put them 
nearly anywhere in the sentence, as long as the adverb preceeds the 
preposition. You can put them as far as you want, "daar hebben de 
Nederlanders geen probleem mee": the Dutch have no problem with that! ;)) 
Actually, it's more common to see those separated forms than the 
unseparated ones. It's a difficult feature of Dutch to learn when you're a 
foreigner, but one of the coolest ones in my opinion :)) .

Now it happens that the ban on prepositions with neuter pronouns is valid 
also with interrogative ("wat") and relative ("dat") pronouns. As with the 
other pronouns, you need to replace them with their spatial equivalent 
("waar" in both cases) and use the preposition as suffix, which can also be 
separated, and put as far from it as you want (in the case of relative 
clauses, Dutch is verb final, so you cannot put the preposition after the 
verb. But you can put it just before it). So something like "what are you 
looking at?" becomes in Dutch "waar kijk je naar?" with identical position 
of the interrogative word and the preposition in both languages. Dutch 
truly has dangling prepositions :)) .

Now the forms using the spatial adverbs can also be used like that with 
true spatial meaning (do "hieronder" can mean both "under this" and "under 
here"). So "where do you come from" becomes "waar kom je vandaan?" with 
"waarvandaan" separated just like "from where" in English. You probably 
think it could be ambiguous. In practice, I've never come across a case 
where it would be.

So your teachers are really wrong in saying that dangling prepositions are 
exclusive to English. Dutch has them (though with a slightly different 
use), I'm pretty sure Frisian and Afrikaans have them too, and I wouldn't 
be surprised if Low German dialects, if not High German, would have them 
too. What about Scandinavian tongues?

Note that dangling prepositions as used in Dutch are so cool I'm planning 
to use something similar in Maggel ;) .


>But at some point, I think with the spread of comprehensive education, it
>was considered that grammar inhibited creative writing and gave those kids
>who couldn't analyze & parse a sense of inferiority - so grammar was
>downgraded (as was spelling & punctuation) and creativity was king.
I'm happy it hasn't gone that bad in France. The usual logic of the 
teachers is that creativity cannot exist without a good foundation of 
grammar, spelling and punctuation.


>I doubt that many in the UK hear anything about 'dangling prepositions' -
>indeed, I doubt that many school-leavers could tell you what a preposition
>is, let alone whether the poor critter is dangling or not.
That's bad when teachers don't know that anymore. I'm happy it hasn't 
happened (yet) in France, or in Holland for that matter, or at least not 
that badly :) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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