<<...those German compound verbs often leave "auf" or "zu" at the end of the sentence...>>
That is because in such cases they must leave "auf" or "zu" at the end of the sentence. But in these cases "auf" and "zu" are not prepositions; they are verb prefixes (called "separable modifiers"), as in the infinitives aufsprechen. zusprechen, etc.
In other words, they are integral parts of the infinitive. However, German grammar (may it be thrice damned to hell!) demands that in the present and the simple past the prefix is split off, and MUST migrate to the end of the sentence, no matter how long it is. Hence you get these crazy paragraph-long sentences that do not reveal their meaning until you finally reach that separable modifier, as in: "Er gab......blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...auf."
Where am I going with this? Follow me...
Old English, like German, also had verb prefixes derived from prepositions. And, like German (and Indo-European languages in general), it had a single-word infinitive with a special infinitive ending. For example, the following verbs were derived, with the help of prefixes, from the basic stem verb, settan (to sit):
asettan, besettan, forsettan, foresettan, gesettan, ofsettan, onsettan, tosettan, unsettan, withsettan.
Now, I do not know whether these prefixes were separable, or whether they had to be placed at the end of the sentence in certain cases, as in modern German.
But, what I do know -- TA, DA! This is my own discovery (meaning, I did not read about it in any book) -- is that with the appearance of the modern English two-word infinitive (e.g., "to do", "to act"), most verb prefixes were detached permanently from the infinitive, and placed directly after it. And there, those displaced prefixes are mistaken for prepositions! Note the following:
to speak out = "outspeak-an"
to speak up = "upspeak-an"
etc.
Thus, in the sentence -- "Why doesn't he speak up?" "up" is not a preposition!!!
What makes it particularly obvious in the case of a verb like "to speak up" is that "up" cannot be followed by a noun. Thus, it is not a preposition.
If foreigners were aware of this, I think it would make learning English a lot easier for them. As it is, they are always complaining: "Why does English have so many idioms?" They are taught that there is a verb "to speak", and then there are all those "idioms", like "speak out", "speak up", etc. Hence they do not understand the logic of our verb formation.
jbe
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