The article shows how some combinations of inseparable pre-verbs with simple verbs are produced in German. Although previous research has provided some syntactic and semantic insights, nothing has been revealed about the interdependence of both of them. The author analyzes the mechanisms which act in the expansion of meaning in inseparable verbs throughout history. Morphosemantic research which takes into account the philosophy of language has cast some light on the lexicalization of these types of verbs which originally come from adverbs or prepositions. Metaphor and analogy are considered to be some of the operations that play a part in the conversion of those semantically transparent prepositions or adverbs into semantically opaque verbs. (Begoña Casasnovas Gil, Ruiz de Mendoza Group)