Re: LONG: Latest Wenetaic Stuff

I wasn't quite clear from your message...  Are you saying that
"asunder" is a pre/postposition or that it isn't?

At least in my subjective semantic analysis, "asunder" can be
reasonably described either as an adverb or as part of certain verbs
such as "broke," "tore," and "rent."  Not as a postposition.

"He rent his garment asunder/rent asunder his garment."  "garment" is
not the object of "asunder," it is the object of "rent."

Just as in, "He tore his clothes up/tore up his clothes" "clothes" is
not the object of "up," it is the object of "tore."  And "up" may be
best described as a detatchable part of the verb "tore."

Now in "he drove along the road," you cannot say in English "he drove
the road along" -- it's clearly a different beast; a genuine
preposition.

The preposition-like elements of "tore up his clothes" are clearly
not the same animal as the real prepositions of "he ran up the hill"
-- here, "up the hill" has a distinct meaning, whereas "up his
clothes" has no meaning separate from "tore."

Again, I'm not clear on your position on this, Dirk, but that's how I
see it.

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             edheil@postmark.net
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dirk elzinga wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >
> > Tom Wier wrote:
> > > Actually, English has a couple postpositions.  "asunder" and "apart"
> > > both act as postpositions:  "He broke it asunder", and "He broke
> > > it apart".   German "entlang" and (I think) "entgegen" also operate
> > > along similar lines.
> >
> > I dunno about that.  I think that in those cases those are like the "up"
> > in "run up" (in the sense of "run a bill up").  I don't see any
> > postpositional relationship there.
>
> On the contrary, both of these are genuine postpositions with
> clearly locative meanings (e.g. entlang 'along'; Er fuhr die
> Strasse entlang 'He drove along the street').