http://www.englishforums.com/search/pro.htm?q=tag%3aLiterature+tag%3aPhrasal+verbs&tag=Literature,Phrasal+verbs&orTags=0Search results for 'tag:Literature tag:Phrasal verbs' matching tags 'Literature' and 'Phrasal verbs'en-USCSMOD (Build: 3172.32282)http://www.englishforums.com/English/LatinGermanLanguagesInfluenced-English/mvxx/post.htm#60364Thu, 09 Dec 2004 07:38:34 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:60364CalifJimYou and your classmate don't seem to have any standard by which both of you agree to measure influence. Will it be the number of words related to each? Will it be the most frequently used words? The most frequently used words in everyday conversation? The most frequently used words in formal writing? In literature? Will your standard not have anything to do with word counts? Will you measure influence by similarity of syntax and morphology? Which syntactic structures will you measure? Phrasal verbs? Verb position within the sentence? The system of verb tenses? <br /> <br />I don't think it will be possible ever to reach an agreement on all these and hundreds of other issues. There is no objective standard of what "influence" consists of in this context. <br /> <br />The tense system, the modal verb system, and the phrasal verbs all point to Germanic elements as the infrastructure of English. Most of our everyday words are related to German. Nevertheless, we have more words related to the Romance languages, originally borrowed through French, than words with Germanic roots. <br /> <br />I suppose, in the absence of any rigorous standards and accurate data to answer the question, I personally would argue that German did not, strictly speaking, <EM>influence</EM> English, because English is the natural historic outgrowth of a branch of German itself. We don't normally use the word "influence" in that sense. If English already existed apart from German and then came in contact with German and absorbed some of its characteristics, then I might use the word "influence". I would say that French, as a superposition of French vocabulary upon a Germanic substructure, fulfills the role of "influence" much better. [Direct borrowings from Latin (not through French) are fewer and mostly related to church terminology.] <br /> <br />California Jim