It seems as if many Germanic aspects of the English language exist in their full-fledged forms in German and in vestigial forms in English.
I wonder whether phrasal verbs in English are somewhat like that. The phenomenon of phrasal verbs in English is far more than a mere vestige, but if it evolved from the same earlier phenomenon as German verbs with separable prefixes, then the German version seems like the full-fledged version and the English version less elaborate.
(As a fairly extreme example of such a "vestige", notice that in English the plural of "he" is "they", the plural of "she" is "they", and the plural of "it" is "they", so that the gender distinctions vanish when the pronoun becomes plural. In German, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles, and demonstratives can be masculine, feminine, or neuter when they are singular, and in no instance whatsoever is there any such distinction in the plural. (That doesn't mean every noun or pronoun can take any of the three genders. But adjectives, articles, and demonstratives can.)
To "give up" does not mean to donate in an ascending vertical direction.
He gave it up.
He gives up playing billiards.
He can give it up.
He gave it up.
He has given it up.
He refuses to give it up.
Now use German syntax:
He gave it up.
He gives up billiardsplaying. (Here I have in mind the neuter gerund ending with "-en" (if "gerund" is the right word for it).)
He can it upgive.
He gave it up.
He has it upgiven.
He refuses, it uptogive.
In some cases the prefix "up" is separate from the verb "give"; in some cases it is not, as in "upgive", "upgave", "upgiven", in one case, "uptogive", the word "to" is in the middle of it although it would be separate if there were no prefix. (One thing about English that is Germanic is the use of the preceding word "to" to form infinitives. In German the word is "zu", with "z" pronounced as in "Mozart". This is in contrast to French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin, and, I think(?), most European languages, which use a suffix to form infinitives.) (The use of the auxiliary word "will" to form the future tense is another thing about English that is Germanic, although I think the German word that evolved from the same source as "will" is not the one used in that role in German.)
So the English version seems somewhat stripped down and less elaborate than the German version.
Unless it's not really a version of the same thing—not descended from a common source. So which is it? [Clarification at the request of @Mitch in comments: "which is it?" means: Is it descended from the same source, or not?]