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 List 
Organization: The Internet
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   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