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Robert McNeil? The Story of English?
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Sorry, I meant in the other IE languages besides Germanic, Classical Greek, and Sanskrit. The thing about fixed preverbs in English is that it's no longer a productive derivation. Disagree away, as I said I'm just mulling it over out loud. Seems to me there's plenty of room for dissenting opinions. 
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Sorry, I meant in the other IE languages besides Germanic, Classical Greek, and Sanskrit.
Like VBscript, Java and ActiveX? [alien-e]
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Like VBscript, Java and ActiveX?
I was thinking more of C# ... But seriously, Slavic, Baltic, etc.
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no longer a productive derivation
Unless I greatly misunderstand the meaning of productive in this context, I don't see that prepositions are a productive derivation, either. If I'm showing my ignorance, please enlighten me.
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When does a preverb cease being associated with the verb and, becoming a preposition, come to be associated with a noun instead? Or become an adverb?
In all seriousness, isn't the answer partly (if not wholly reflective) in how prefixes and suffixes become "fixed"?
BTW, I am fascinated with this discussion...it reminds me (alot) of music theory.
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I just meant the coining of verbs plus verbal particles. It's a stretch. I can't think of an example. Ignore it.
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Yes, it just dawned on me. Which came first? The preposition or the cases? (Probably another wrong question, but what the hay.) Preps and cases exist in the oldest recorded IE languages. Cases go away in some of those languages as we get closer to modern times. Prepositions remain, however.
One theory about cases is that they started as clitics (i.e., separate words or particles that through loss of accent became fused to the words after them or before them).
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I've heard it theorized that the whole thang is a cycle of postpositions becoming case-endings which fall together and recruit postverbs as prepositions which become case-beginnings which fall together and recruit preverbs as postpositions which become case-endings. Or something like that.
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So, the chicken builds a nest for eggs it can feel coming?
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