304 The Loom of Language
ancj, can replace the adverb previously Where one word suffices, German
demands three:
Preposition before the dawn (temporal) vor Tagesanbtuch
before his eyes (spatial) vor semen Augen
Conjunction before he saw it ehe er es sah or bevor er es sdh
Adverb you said so before Sie haben es bereits gesagt
Similarly our word after can be either a preposition or a conjunction,
eg
after his birth nach seiner Geburt
after he was born nachdem er geboren war
On the credit side of the German account, German has one word,
wahrend, for which we have a separate preposition (during) and con-
junction (while), e g.
during dinner wahrend des Essens
while he was eating wahrend er ass
For each of the English directives inside, outside, up, and over, there is a
separate German preposition (in, aus, auf, uber} and two adverbs the
use of which demands an explanation
The small number of essential particles in a basic vocabulary for
Anglo-American use is partly due to the fact that we have largely
discarded distinctions akeady implicit in the accompanying verb For
instance we no longer make the distinction between rest and motion (or
situation and direction) explicit in archaic couplets as here-hither or
there-tktther. The German dictionary is supercharged with redundant
particles or redundant grammatical tricks which indicate whether the
verb implies motion, or if so in what (hither-thither) direction Corre-
sponding to each of the German prepositions mentioned last (in, aus,
auf, uber) there are here-there couplets herein-hinein, heraus-hmaus,
herauf-hinauf, heruber-hinuber analogous to herab-hmab (down) for
which there is no precisely equivalent German preposition * If the
verb is kommen (which akeady indicates motion towards a fixed point),
we use the here-foxm, her" If the verb is gehen (which indicates motion
away from a fixed point) we have to use the there-foim hin-, e.g
Kommen Sie herab = Come down Gehen Sie hinab = Get down
* The adverbial form placed after the accusative noun does the work of the
preposition^ as in
er gwg den Hugel hinab he went down the Ml
er kommt die Strasse herab he is coming down the street