Separable Verb - Structural Analysis

Structural Analysis

Separable verbs challenge the understanding of meaning compositionality because when they are separated, the two parts do not form a constituent. Hence theories of syntax that assume that form-meaning correspondences should be understood in terms of syntactic constituents are faced with a difficulty, for it is not apparent what sort of syntactic unit the verb and its particle build. One prominent means of addressing this difficulty is via movement. One stipulates that languages like German and Dutch are actually SOV languages (as opposed to SVO) and that when separation occurs, the lexical verb has moved out of the clause final position to a derived position further to the left, e.g.

The verb kommt is seen as originating in a position where it appeared with its particle an, but it then moves leftward to the V2 position.

An alternative analysis of the structure of separable verbs dispenses with the notion that the constituent is the fundamental unit of syntactic analysis. Instead, the catena is taken to be primary. The following dependency grammar trees illustrate the catena-based analysis:

The verb and particle (in green) form a catena when they are separated in the first two trees, and they also form a catena when they appear together as a single word in the second two trees (since a single word is always a catena). The principle of compositionality is hence understood in terms of catenae. The catena is the basic meaning-bearing unit, not the constituent. The four Hungarian examples from above are analyzed in terms of catenae as follows:

The particle le is separated from its verb when the negation appears (trees b-d). Despite this fact, the particle still forms a catena with its verb in all four trees. These structures are therefore consistent with the catena-based understanding of meaning compositionality. The fundamental meaning bearing unit is the catena, not the constituent.