Arabic-L:LING:verbs with preps response

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 07 Oct 2011
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1) Subject:verbs with preps response

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1)
Date: 07 Oct 2011
From:Joost Kremers <joostkremers at fastmail.fm<mailto:joostkremers at fastmail.fm>>
Subject:verbs with preps response

Dear Zainab,

I'm afraid you're confusing two things. In English (and other Germanic languages) verb+preposition combinations come in two variaties. On the one hand, there are cases such as 'to count on', 'to wait for', etc. These verbs select a prepositional phrase to express their objects. The noun that fills this role is the complement of the preposition, e.g., 'John counted on Peter', where 'Peter' is the complement of 'on'. These verbs are considered to be intransitive, because they do not have an object of their own, they only select the PP.

The second kind are so-called particle verbs. In these verbs, the object noun is *not* the complement of the preposition, instead the preposition is intransitive. Examples of this type are 'to lift up', 'to bring down', 'to come in', 'to break up', etc. These verbs can be transitive or intransitive (e.g., 'to come in'), but if they are transitive, the object is an object of the verb, not of the preposition. This is visible from the fact that the object can appear in between the verb and the preposition, as in 'John lifted it up', not *'John lifted up it'. If the object is a noun phrase, not a preposition, it can usually also appear after the preposition ('John lifted up the table') but here 'the table' is still the object of the verb, because it is the thing being lifted up (cf. also 'John lifted the table up', which is also ok.)

The second type of verb does not exist in Arabic. If a verb takes a preposition, this preposition must always take its own complement. Therefore, they are comparable to the first class of verbs, such as 'to count on'.

With jaa'a, matters are slightly different, although not very much. jaa'a is a verb that can take both a direct object *and* a prepositional phrase. Both are optional, however. One can say 'jaa'a 'aHmad' 'Ahmed came', but also 'jaa'a-naa 'aHmad', which is a construction that's similar to 'Ahmed reached us', where the goal of the motion is the object of the verb. Additionally, of course, one can specify something that the person coming is carrying, and this is done with the preposition bi.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

--
Joost Kremers, PhD
University of Göttingen
Institute for German Philology
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
37073 Göttingen, Germany

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