In both of the following examples the car is located in an exterior space. The difference between the two phrases is, that when exteriority in general is denoted, we need one preposition in Danish; 'udenfor'. If a reference object is present in the construction, the preposition 'udenfor' must be devided into 'uden' and 'for', thus creating a prepostition complex. This destinction is showed below:
Bilen holder udenfor.
“The car is standing outside. The car is parked outside.”
| Bilen |
| bil | en |
| carSBJ | theDEFSG |
| N |
| holder |
| holder |
| holdPRES |
| Vitr |
| udenfor |
| udenfor |
| outside |
| PREP |
Bilen holder uden for huset.
“The car stands outside the house. The car is parked outside the house.”
| Bilen |
| bil | en |
| carSBJ | theDEFSG |
| N |
| holder |
| holder |
| holdPRES |
| Vitr |
| huset |
| hus | et |
| houseOBL | theDEFSG |
| N |
Even though udenfor in one word demands that no reference object be stated, the prepotion can still be said to imply a reference object. This reference object can be found by looking at the person uttering the respective phrase, since the exterioroty expressed by udenfor can be seen as being exterior to something; the interiority of the place where the speaker is located -this is very often a room or the like.
Having said that, this does not mean that udenfor and uden for are alike afteral. The latter is follewed by an overtly stated reference object, whereas the former only gives an idea of the reference object. In this way we can says that udenfor implies a reference object which is exterior in relation to the location of the speaker.
One might also see the word udenfor as the location, in this way meaning the area which is exterior in relation to the room or general location of the speaker. We can prefer to see the word udenfor in this way as an independent lexeme with the above suggested referent, or we can prefer to see udenfor as implying a reference object which is the interiority of the location of the speaker to which the located objects location is in contrast. In whatever way we choose to analyze how denfor gets is meaning, the word will denote location in the same way varying only in terms of extralinguistic factors; udenfor will denote the space which is exterior in relation to the speakers location, and thus the area occupying the space referred to, changes only according to speaker and his location when uttering/writing the respective phrase.
Last but not least, one should keep in mind, that it is certainly not every native Danish speaking person who destinguishes between udenfor and uden for in the written language (the destinction is obviously not that relavant when it comes to spoken language). Udenfor with a following overtly expressed reference object and udenfor without an overt reference object can occur in the same text. That is the two forms are often interchanged. The above discussion of udenfor and uden for should not be taken as a description of every native Danes´ usage and understanding of the two forms, though it does treat the correct syntactic and semantic usages according to Dansk Sprogråd, which is at the same time the usage of the main part of the Danish population.
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