Saturday, 8 September 2012

Mixed marriages

English, as we all know, has both Germanic and Romance language roots. To quote two topic sentences from a Wikipedia page:

  1. All Germanic languages are satellite-framed languages.
  2. On the other hand, all Romance languages are verb-framed. 
In satellite-framed languages, verbs of motion contain require particles to express direction and how the verb is performed, whereas in verb-framed languages, such meanings are encoded in the verb itself. 

This partly accounts for the divide between Germanic and Romance vocabulary in English being multi-word and single word respectively.


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2 comments:

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