keenir wrote: ↑Tue Aug 05, 2025 11:17 pm
hmm, interesting distinction; took me a few reads to notice the difference.
if you're setting Anubis up, it makes me feel like the context (or the sentence's ending which i didn't hear) was either about taking a fall (or the blame) or on a date.
if you're setting this up, it feels like the context is talking about a computer program or a birthday party.
It seems to me that the position of particles associated with verbs in English (akin to separable-prefix verbs in German) is lexicalized, and in the English I am familiar with set up with the meaning of preparing something has up come directly after the verb.
so I can be sure I'm visualizing this correctly...you're saying set X up, wherein X is the verb - is that correct?
if I got that right, then...set bake up? to my ear, set up baking sounds more correct. (or, even better still, set up baking tins for the cooking)
maybe its only certain verbs that fit between set and up.
No no no - set is the verb here! That is, in such usages of set up for me up comes right after set.
Now that I think of it, set up where up comes finally is also valid, but has a completely different meaning, and is not valid for computer programs like Anubis, i.e. making someone take a fall (as you mentioned).
Hmm...well, for computer programs, maybe I need to set up Anubis on my computer is for me as understandable as I need to set Anubis up on my computer. In both instances, Anubis would be a program or a collection of programs I need to install and run. (can replace 'anubis' with 'windows' in both of them)
I understand "I need to set Anubis up on my computer" but it does not feel quite right to me.
Interestingly enough, "I need to set it up" and "I need to set it up on my computer" are preferable over ?"I need to set up it" and ?"I need to set up it on my computer" to me.
For me, with these phrasal verbs, <verb> <adverb> <object> as opposed to <verb> <object> <adverb> often has the disadvantage that the adverb may be misinterpreted as a preposition with an object, though the former is preferred when the object is a long phrase..