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I was just wondering if anybody knows anything about the history and origin of phrasal verbs.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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RunTumTugger inquires into the history and origin of phrasal verbs.
Do you mean like run into as in run into an old friend?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome, and cute name, RTT! Didn't I just see you on the chat?
Could you give some examples of phrasal verbs, please?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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See, you learn something every day. Thanks for the links FS.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Some great sites there, Father Steve.
The history of the phrasal verb, as I see it, is rooted in the Germanic languages. There is a concept in modern German that they refer to as separable prefixes; beligerentyouth could probably supply better information than I could about separable prefixes in German, but suffice it to say that the prefixes in question are, in general, indistinguishable from prepositions. They can also be placed at the end of a sentence in some constructions of the normal German sentence. Father Steve's third link above is a very good description of phrasal verbs and I won't go into that here. I will add that traditional grammarians seem to have lost the concept of phrasal verbs and it is not something that is taught in English as a First Language classes. I'm glad to see that it is a concept taught in ESL. But back to the history. The concept is recognized in most Germanic languages that I know anything much about but in English it has given rise to the complaints about ending sentences with prepositions. Since they don't teach it in EFL classes, the difference between a preposition and the separable prefix has become glossed over and folks who are trying too hard to be correct will often come up with extremely contorted sentences. Winston Churchill's famous "It is a silly rule up with which I shall not put" is, of course, a humorous (or should I say humourous) riposte.
The idea of BASIC English, a subset of the language consisting of just several thousand words, relies heavily on the phrasal verb which prevents it from being one of the things it was supposed to be which is an easy road to English for foreign language speakers.
Was that confusing enough? If not I can try again.
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addict
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addict
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a humorous (or should I say humourous) riposte
I had to go and look it up to be sure, but my Shorter Oxford tells me that even in the UK we spell it 'humorous'.
Why, anyone? Especially since it also gives humourless and humoursome, both of which keep their u.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Humourless and humoursome are relatively modern coinages within English, humour + living affix.
Humorous however is a Latin word űmôrôsus. The stem is űmôr- with long O. (The initial H arose in post-classical Latin when H was largely silent in common speech.) The long vowel became short in final position, giving űmor 'humour'.
This vowel difference was preserved in Old/Middle French, giving rise to modern French humeur ~ humoreux and English humour ~ humorous.
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Carpal Tunnel
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How do Brits & colonists spell 'glamorous'? If 'glamour' also loses its U when adding the -ous suffix, I'd guess there must be a rule out there to avoid repetition of the 'ou.' Of course, we in the States keep a check on our extraneous vowels ['nod to jmh' emoticon]
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Pooh-Bah
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>How do Brits & colonists spell 'glamorous'? If 'glamour' also loses its U when adding the -ous suffix, I'd guess there must be a rule out there to avoid repetition of the 'ou.'
glamorous ['nod to Annastrophic' emoticon]
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