Re: Liking German

David Peterson wrote:
><< Also, all of the above rules can be broken in lyrical language. >>
>
>    As they can in English.
>    I saw a dog in the cinema.
>    It was in the cinema I saw a dog.
>    It was a dog I saw in the cinema.
>    In the cinema it was a dog I saw.  (There'd h ave to be a strange
>situation to make this plausible.)
I don't think this construction counts. I'm sure German could do it too--
"es war ein Hund (der/den or whatever) ich sah...."
Except in poetry or archaizing prose, we wouldn't ordinarily say
    "A dog I saw in the cinema."  (Full Sentence, not "a dog (deleted
relative)..."
    "In the cinema saw I a dog."
    "To the dog gave a bone I" (quite odd, this)

Sir Thomas Browne, Milton, and other writers of an earlier era often used
Latinate syntax, sometimes to good effect, sometimes not.  Great Lines from
"Paradise Lost"--
      "Him the Almighty hurled headlong from the skies....."

       "....Yet not more to me returns
       Day."

The Spanish Baroque poet Luis de Góngora did such things to excess; his name
is become a dirty word in Lit Crit (gongorism)