--- In cybalist@..., "petegray" <petegray@...> wrote:
>
> The placing of the infinitive or participle at the end of the
sentence has
> nothing to do with its being a verb form. It is part of the usual
German
> pattern of delaying sentence closure until the last word. You can
see this
> pattern with all sorts of other words as well.
>
> For example, Dutch says:
> We komen aan in Gent
> German says:
> Wir kommen in Gent an.
> The "an" is delayed so that the sentence is not closed until the
last word.
> There is a similar tendency to delay the object, if possible.
> Ich speile gern mit meinem Sohn am Mittwoch Tennis.
> (Although emphasis affects word order, of course)
>
> A significant difference between German and English word order is
that
> English allows closure very early, and accepts additional phrases,
one after
> another, so you never know when the sentence is going to end,
rather like
> this one, that rambles on and on, until the reader gets
bored ,......
> whereas German drives the sentence from position 2 and the last
position,
> and all the flabby bits are in the middle, on account of
grammatical rules,
> firmly put.
>
> Peter
Hi Peter,
I will give a more detailed picture of my view regarding word order,
since my last postings have been incomplete and partially incorrect.
Consider this pattern on word order in the declarative main sentence
in German:
T V1 (S) O V2
The topic (T) isn't always identical to the grammatical subject (S)
of the verbal, and in such cases the subject is placed after the
finite verbal (V1). The finite verbal is placed directly after the
topic. The infinite verbal (V2), verbal particles such as "an"
in "anrufen" included, is placed at the end of the sentence. So, if
there is given any infinite verbal (any verbal that shows no
agreement with the grammatical subject) the sentence has two
positions for verbals.
In subordinate clauses the V2 position is used for both finite and
infinite verbals.
Therefore, if one is to give a reduced, simplified, pattern coding
that would describe the general word order of the core elements
Subject, Verb, Object, no matter what kind of sentence in question,
it would be SOV. Because, the V2 position exists in any sentence,
dependent or independent, V1 exists only in independent sentences.
You may certainly try, but I don't think you can convince me
otherwise.
Håvard