Re: OT: German Imperatives

Hi!

David J. Peterson writes:
> Henrik:
> <<
> It is not strange or stilted to say 'Kommen Sie bitte her'.  Only
> 'hier' is is not the right word.  The verb is 'herkommen'.
>  >>
>
> Ah...  Well in that case, I definitely did misanalyze the construction.
> I was assuming a construction like this:
>
> V-inf./imp. 3sg.Form.Pron. Adv. "Please"
>
> This is the way I think you'd do it *if* it were that way.  However,
> you've shown that it is a different construction altogether, using
> not a verb and a separate adverb, but a verb with a separable
> prefix.  That, of course, would put the adverb in a different place:
>
> V-inf./imp. 3sg.Form.Pron. "Please" V-Pref.
Hmm, I think also with an adverb, German word order is quite tolerant.
It might even be that verb prefixes are not so different from adverbs
wrt. word order -- I don't know exactly, I'm doing this with my guts
now as I've never analysed the difference carefully.  So with that
care in mind, I would say the default word order for 'Please drive
slowly' would be just the same:

   Fahren Sie         bitte  langsam!
   drive  you(formal) please slow

Just like:
   Kommen Sie         bitte  her!

Another perfectly good word order:

   Bitte fahren Sie langsam!

And slightly more colloquial (just as with 'herkommen'):

   Fahren Sie langsam, bitte!

Now, does this raise your initial question again?

**Henrik

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