Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ucbvax!UICVMC.BITNET!UWC6NTG From: UWC6NTG@UICVMC.BITNET (Nicholas Geovanis 312-996-0590) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: RPN Germanic Languages Message-ID: <8908091357.AA17448@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 8 Aug 89 16:32:54 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International ListOrganization: The Internet Lines: 20 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-USA