Re: Dangling prepositions and phrasal verbs.

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.)

And then half a dozen people would have argued with me, telling me that
I'm just guessing and that these could be seen as suffixes just as easily
(you can't be so Platonic when defining terms like these, you know), that
it's merely my supposition anyway, that I may only be guessing since
there's no evidence that I know anything about Dutch, and probably others
that I can't even anticipate.

Boy, I'm glad I stayed out of that one. Thanks for helping me get my
terminology straight, Christophe. Suffixes it is, then.


-- Mark

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