Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 February 12

= February 12 =

phrasal and prefixed verbs: IE only?
We have Latin-derived verbs accept, conceive, deceive, except, intercept, perceive, receive among others, all from the same root (capere) with different prefixes. There seem to be similar constructions in every Indo-European branch; though the modern English equivalent is phrasal verbs, in which the particle comes last. (Note that you cannot generally infer the meaning from the parts: take on is not the opposite of take off, for example.)

I haven't come across anything analogous in any of the non-IE languages of which I know anything. (To be fair, my acquaintance with any non-IE language is shallow.) Are such verbs only an IE thing? --Tamfang (talk) 07:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * . Georgian has a similar system (though as part of a much more complicated verb system), and I believe the way that its verbal prefixes interact with its aspectual system has prompted suggestions that the Slavonic languages may have acquired theirs from Georgian, though I've no recollection where I read that idea. --ColinFine (talk) 14:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, in respect of your first paragraph, Separable verbs in German and Dutch behave like Latin prefixed verbs in some grammatical contexts, and like English phrasal verbs in others. --ColinFine (talk) 14:43, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I considered mentioning that, and that English sometimes uses the prefix form when such verbs are nouned, e.g. uptake. --Tamfang (talk) 17:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Tamfang -- In early Indo-European, prepositions could generally be used as adverbs (some historical linguists have wondered whether there was even a well-defined class of preposition words in early Indo-European), and word order was fairly free, due to case endings on nouns and inflectional endings on verbs. In this situation, sometimes if you had a verb, a non-subject noun, and an adverb/preposition together in a clause, it could be ambiguous whether the adverb/preposition modified the verb or the noun. In cases where it came to be closely associated with the verb, that was the origin of Indo-European prefixed verbs -- though the "prefixes" retained some limited possibility of being separated from the verb stem in certain syntactic contexts for many centuries in some of the IE daughter languages (still today in modern German separable verbs). Modern English actually has both of the types "to understand" and "to give up" (though verbs of the first type are quasi-relics)... I understand that Hungarian has a system comparable in many ways to the German system, and this is discussed in the Separable verb article. AnonMoos (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * See also article Tmesis. As pointed out there, separation between verb and prefix is not really "splitting", but remnants of the original historical lack of joining... AnonMoos (talk) 17:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Chinese question
I saw this Chinese text on a television screen. What does it say? J I P &#124; Talk 23:25, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The first line is 欢迎使用, which according to Google translate means "Welcome". --Lambiam 09:16, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The next line is 壁紙、小部件和设置, which Google translates as "Wallpapers, widgets and settings". --Lambiam 10:52, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 知道了 - "OK?" 彼得 澳洲 aka --Shirt58 (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 知道了 - "OK?" 彼得 澳洲 aka --Shirt58 (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

So to put everything together, basically it's a tooltip for how to use the TV. Lambiam translated the first two: "Ready to use"/"Welcome", and the second line introduces the topic of the tooltip, "wallpapers, widgets, and settings." The line "触摸并按住背景，即可进行个性化设置" gives you the tip: Pressing and holding the background on the touchscreen will allow you to personalize your settings. The last line that shirt58 translated is the "ok" button that you can press to exit the tooltip.  bibliomaniac 1  5  20:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)