UWC6NTG@UICVMC.BITNET (Nicholas Geovanis 312-996-0590) (08/08/89)
Well, I was hoping someone from Germany or Holland would tackle this,
but noone's spoken up yet. In German, verbs appear at the end of clauses
(or sentences) as a result of "subordination", which occurs when a
subordinate conjunction is used to link clauses, e.g. wenn, obwohl, als
and so on; and when certain compound verb tenses are used, e.g. the past
perfect, passive voice, etc., in which case the auxilliary verb appears
as the second sentence element and the "main" verb appears as the final
sentence element. In normal sentences, the verb must always appear as
the second element (always always), but as the first element in questions
or commands. There are cases when the rule for verb subordination fails,
the so called "double infinitive" (here my knowledge of German grammar
begins to get fuzzy), where the subordinated verb cannot "pass through"
two concatenated infinitives at the end of a sentence, and must come to
rest before them.
Anyway, I wouldn't call German an RPN language, and my limited experience
with Dutch suggests the same. Any Europeans care to comment?
NickGeovanis - UWC6NTG@UICVMC.EDU
SysProg - UnivIllinoisAdminCompCtr
Chicago-IL-USAHALDANE@UFPINE.BITNET ("that _special_ Haldane magic...") (08/09/89)
If you think that the germanic languages, are interesting, you should remember Japanese, where the verb always comes last in a sentence. Or for a change of pace, there is an artificial language called "Loglan" whose syntax is Cambridge prefix notation. Just snacks for thought.... Bob Slaughter Haldane@UFPine <-- Bitnet Haldane@Pine.Circa.Ufl.Edu <-- Internet
henk@cs.eur.nl (Henk Langeveld) (08/10/89)
UWC6NTG@UICVMC.BITNET (Nicholas Geovanis 312-996-0590) writes: > [ treatise on German Grammar deleted ] > Anyway, I wouldn't call German an RPN language, and my limited experience > with Dutch suggests the same. Any Europeans care to comment? > NickGeovanis - UWC6NTG@UICVMC.EDU Well, I started this... Dutch and German aren't RPN languages, but the observation about the verbs is quite right. When a sentence contains more then one verb, all but one are usually placed at the end. To give an example, this text is written in English. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^ Om een voorbeeld te geven, deze tekst is in het Nederlands geschreven. ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ Watch the verbs! Now for a pathological example: 'Ik zou jou wel eens hebben willen zien blijven staan kijken.' 'Ik would have liked to see you stay to stand and watch.' But this has got little to do with Forth, followup to sci.lang -- Henk Langeveld, Unix SysAdmin | domain: <henk@cs.eur.nl> Department of Computer Science | alt: henk@eurtrx.uucp Erasmus University Rotterdam | langeveld@hroeur5.bitnet
jack@cs.glasgow.ac.UK (Jack Campin) (08/24/89)
Try Turkish instead. The verb nearly always goes at the end, and modifiers
always follow what they modify. You could translate RPN arithmetic pretty
near word for word into Turkish, with a few added "ile"'s and "de"'s ("with"
and "also", more or less) and the odd participial verb form instead of an
imperative. - jack
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