Re: USAGE: Verbs and verb compounds

I once had a system where all perpositions were verbs:
(The cat) (is) (on the shelf.)
becomes:
(The cat) (is on) (the shelf).

"To be on" was a verb in itself.  This system, however did not work very
well.

-Matthew

Sally Caves writed:
> > I've read that the prepositions now found in the Indo-European
> > languages used to be adverbs. 'Extra' oblique arguments in a sentence
> > just got a suitable case, like locative, and the adverb was only
> > needed for precision. They were only grammaticalized as prepositions
> > later.
>
> Thanks Lars, and hirie, Nik!  <GGGGGG>  Teonaht thinks of
> prepositions as adverbs, essentially.  And I think there is a ghost
> of this old thinking still present in English, despite the fact that
> it has been heavily grammaticized and parceled into its parts of speech.
> This is all I was trying to say.  Not that prepositions at the end
> of a sentence were adverbs and not prepositions.
>
> > In that system, your two views of a detachable verb become the same.
> >
> > (Classical Latin still has a trace of the old system, where you don't
> > use 'in' and 'to' with "names of cities and small islands," but just
> > case forms (depending on the noun class, since the locative has merged