Preposition doubling

[Oscar E Swan]

In seeming refutation of the association between preposition doubling and
adjective/noun placement:

Polish employs adjective/noun reversal much more often and
systematically than Russian, yet preposition doubling is much less often
encountered. In Polish, the adjective after the noun tends to make the
adjective into a 'type' adjective: wymagajacy dyrektor 'a demanding
director' vs. dyrektor wymagajacy 'a demanding sort of director'.


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Oscar E. Swan   Dept. of Slavic Languages & Literatures
1417 Cathedral of Learning   Univ. of Pittsburgh  15260
412-624-5707      swan+ at pitt.edu
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On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Uladzimir Katkouski wrote:

> 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
>