Preposition doubling

[Uladzimir Katkouski]

Here is what one Belarusian wrote...

U.K.

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

Date sent:      Tue, 9 Mar 1999 17:31:34 -0500 (EST)
From:           "E R" <nutts74 at hotmail.com>
Subject:        Re: Preposition doubling


I can't recall this phenomenon in Belarusian, but I can't speak for all
the dialects, though. As far as Russian is concerned, I suspect that
this phenomenon is caused by the fact that in Russian the object and its
describing adjective or pronoun are usually interchangeable without a
change in sense (E.g. Sizhy na sinem divane OR sizhu na divane sinem).
So, in the colloquial speech, a speaker can sometimes add adjectives
after objects, just because he has thought of them after the sentence is
said (Rasskazhi mne o brate... o svoem, o starshem), and additional
prepositions are simply links to the previous phrase. I personally
believe this phenomenon is used primarily in poetry for the sake of
rhymes, since you can just add prepositions to maintain the rhythm.

Auhien