I know for example, Mandarin (Chinese) has it like from this sentence: 我睡了八個小時 (I slept for 8 hours), the hanzi: 覺 is omitted in this sentence because 睡 is already a word with its own meaning “sleep” which in itself conveys the meaning of the verb. There are “Euro” languages where separable verbs exist such as Dutch or German for example. Is there an equivalent of that in the English language though?
I think you’re overstating your position here. Many phrasal verbs are most natural when the verb and preposition are separated, and you would not think they were an idiot for separating them:
Maybe it’s not as dramatic as German, but it’s still a correct example and something a native speaker would produce.
I have noticed that all these examples in English have some kind of “spatial relation” as their second part: up, on, in, off… are these the only ones in English that are really separable, where you really can put other words in between?
There are also working memory constraints, or similar real-time processing constraints, at play which can affect how acceptable (in terms of native speaker intuition) some examples are.
I won’t get into the possible differences in the intervening structures (e.g. the relative clause), but as a mostly fair generalization: in these cases, the preference to split the verb into parts is inversely correlated with the number of intervening elements.
Something similar occurs without phrasal verbs but with indirect objects optionally expressed as prepositional phrases:
The similarities suggest that the pattern has more to do with heavy intervening phrases, or even more generally syntactic headedness, and not wanting to rebuild or finish building earlier structures later in the parse.
Ooh, this is a very interesting line of inquiry! Is there any evidence of differences in the working memory of language speakers where there is more tolerance on the amount of words between separable verbs, like the 50 word intervals in German mentioned elsewhere? Your longer examples are starting to get very Silas Mariner energy.
Yeah, I’m not sure it’s entirely relevant to the existing conversation, but maybe at least in part.
I don’t have anything to cite directly in front of me for other examples from non-English languages, but I know some work exists out there, particularly in cognitive linguistics. If I remember right, some papers under the “construction grammar” umbrella touch on this in an effort to explain relative preferences between what would otherwise be equally weighted constructions. Also look into works by Dryer and Haspelmath (together and separately) for similar discussion with a more typological bent.
German does have one typological distinction which might also play a role in how permissive it is with seperable prefixes: the verb-second constraint, which basically exists in the Germanic branch of Indo-European and only a handful of languages elsewhere. This is why German allows basic clauses which are SVO (e.g. Der Hund frisst den Fleisch), but as soon as there is an auxiliary verb, it looks more like an SOV hybrid with the main verb at the end (der Hund wird den Fleisch fressen), or fully SOV if a subordinate of a matrix clause (Wir glauben, dass der Hund den Fleisch fressen wird).
That doesn’t really explain why you have to do ich sage ab instead of the ungrammatical *ich absage, but having to move that ab to the end is at least reminiscent of having to move verbs in the same way. I don’t think there’s even an alternative, so extremely long examples persist by necessity.
Those all sound weird/dumb in English. Yes, some native speakers would produce that, but you’d never be taught English that way, because it’s not standard English. You would be taught those are grammatically incorrect ways of speaking/writing.
German also has native speakers that don’t adhere to standard German grammar, but you’re not going to learn that when you learn German. and if you use that grammar Germans will think you’re weird/dumb.
Where I live people think I’m a dumb asshole because I end sentences with prepositions when I speak.
I might say you’re on rather tenuous ground telling a native english speaker sentences they produce sound weird and dumb in their native language.
No, I’m American. Every language has a standard version, that the educated people speak, and a non-standard versions that mark you as uneducated and foolish that are not socially acceptable in professional work.
And part of becoming educated is learning to stamp out your ways of talking/writing you were brought up with and learn to conform to the standardized version of you language and the correct pronunciation of words and use of grammar. Separable verbs are not allowed in proper English, and even saying things like ‘call up’ are hokey and provincial sounding compared to simply saying ‘call’ or ‘phone’.
I find this view surprising from an American. I find the use of the education system to enforce a “standard” dialect of English rather than studying and celebrating regional dialect at odds with both the project of America and our national character.
I come from Boston.my regional dialect is the mockery of the nation. my mom has a boston accent, all people is think she’s a stupid idiot for the way she speaks, and mock her behind her back for it. People tell me how educated and smart I am because I don’t have it.
You don’t seem to live in the real world. Nobody celebrates regional dialects so much as they run from them because they understand how they will economically ruin you if you don’t unlearn them. They make for nice characters on TV, but in the real world you won’t get hired if you talk weird and regional dialects are considered a characteristic of the poor and impoverished, not the successful and educated.
If you’re sensitive about how people judge you based on your accent and regional dialect, I feel that advocating that we treat people who speak nonstandard forms of english or in regional dialects, even on fedi, is a more productive way to get the treatment from others you want.
dude, these are facts of life.
i’m glad you didn’t have to learn them. some of us do. including my german host family who lectured me on their issues with having to suppress their own native dialect to have better economic opportunity for themselves. Including the fact they hired a language coach for their own children.
You can be all high minded you want about it, but the fact is your chances of having a decent-paying or high-paying career are very low unless you speak the standard version of your language.Some of us live in the real world with real world consequences for our actions. We don’t get it sit around and day dream about the revolution, like so many on fedi love to do.
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Wow, this is ridiculously prescriptivist.
Also, huh? put on, take off, take out, pull over, there’s plenty of separable verbs that are perfectly normal in formal use.
Also also, as one of those “educated” people, dialect differences are cool actually and “stamping them out” should not be a goal.
– Frost
dude, next time you go to a wedding, please don’t shower for three days and wear your most worn and tattered clothing.
then when everyone is disgusted and asks you to leave, be sure to lecture them on how they are prescriptivist about fashion an body hygene and how you should be allowed to dress/wash yourself however YOU want.
yeah, i get it, you’re the typical liberal who ‘celebrates’ things, but if someone wrote you an email with imperfect grammar you’d get bent out of shape and have zero respect for them.