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’jest’ vs ’to jest’ (Polish) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 10 20 July 2007 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Reading (Polish) Grammar in a Nutshell, there was a section called "The main kinds of noun phrases in a sentence together with the cases they usually take." It had several examples involving the verb 'to be', along with whether to use the nominative (or genitive, if negated, but that's not the focus of my question, though it seems a rather strange feature) or instrumental case.
Is 'to' always used in identity sentences? If so, is having/not having 'to' conceptually similar to the identity/existence split in Japanese, with 'desu' vs 'aru'/'iru'? If it's similar, is there -any- conceptual difference? How do you know if a verb is being used in a 'predicate' sense, or is just being used existentially? Is it based on whether or not there's something after the verb 'to be' vs having a sentence in the form (noun) (to be)? Wikipedia defines it (in the linguistic sense) as 'an expression that can be true of something'; are there any examples which my quick rule-of-thumb for predicacy doesn't handle? Here are the example sentences from the grammar: SUBJECT OF EXISTENTIAL VERB (NOMINATIVE CASE, GENITIVE if negated): Ewa jest. Ewa is here-Nominative. Ewy nie ma. Ewa is not here-Genitive. COMPLIMENT IN AN IDENTITY SENTENCE, after to jest/są (NOMINATIVE CASE): Ewa to jest moja dobra przyjació∏ka. Ewa is my good friend-Nominative. To są nasi nowi sąsiedzi. Those are our new neighbors. PREDICATE NOMINAL - nominal complement of ''be' or 'become' - (INSTRUMENTAL CASE): Ewa jest interesującą osobą. Ewa is an interesting person-Instrumental. For anyone else curious, there's the rather useful Univ. of Pittsburgh: Polish Language Website, which contains the above-mentioned grammar and a reference grammar. My thanks go to frenkeld for telling me about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6904 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 2 of 10 21 July 2007 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I can't fully understand what you were asking for actually :) As a native speaker I can't provide any grammatical explanational either. Just a few sentences which sound ok, and which certainly don't.
Ewa jest. - ok Ewa to jest. - wrong (but you probably know that) Ewa to jest moja dobra przyjaciółka - ok Ewa to moja (without 'jest') dobra przyjaciółka - also ok Also: Ewa jest moją dobrą przyjaciółką - ok (instrumental case, isn't it?) You can use "To są nasi nowi sąsiedzi" rather when you point at them and explain to somebody who these people are. I would use it in this case. Ewa to interesująca osoba. = Ewa jest interesującą osobą. To my mind, these two sentences are perfectly equal as for the meaning. I know I probably didn't help you a lot hehe, but please don't hesitate to ask any further questions. Pozdrowienia z Polski :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6850 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 3 of 10 21 July 2007 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Heh, I was just going to write the exact same thing. I also can't really help you with a correct grammatical explanation of these.
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| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 4 of 10 22 July 2007 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's not necessary to complicate things... 'To' literally means 'that' or 'those'.
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| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6904 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 5 of 10 22 July 2007 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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True. But sometimes it's not that easy to translate it.
Ewa is my good friend. - Ewa to jest moja dobra przyjaciółka. And you can't say "Ewa is that my good friend" obviously. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6413 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 6 of 10 22 July 2007 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I beg your pardon? You surely mean 'this'/'these', no? And anyway, it's equally unnecessary to oversimplify things . "to" has a number of different functions, some of which are not-that-well described by Polish grammar gurus (I've been to a seminar dedicated exclusively to "to" - it ended unconclusively ;) For instance, there is an obvious (to any native speaker) difference between: Mój tata jest pilotem - My dad is a pilot (normal declarative sentence) and Mój tata to jest pilotem - My dad is a pilot (implied - he's so cool and yours is not; it's sort of kindergarden bragging) I would be hard-pressed to tell what the 'to' is doing here, though. Emphasis marker? Topic marker? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 7 of 10 23 July 2007 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
True. But you can say 'Ewa, that is my good friend' or 'Ewa, she is my good friend' or - with compliments to peterlin-san (^-^) - 'Ewa, this is my good friend'. Still sounds a bit awkward in English but is much more palatable. It accurately reflects the Polish construction and makes instant sense to a new learner who might have little interest for theoretical debates at this stage in his studies... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6413 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 8 of 10 23 July 2007 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
peterlin-what, my dear sir? If you insist on adding something to my screen-name make it peterlin-stxa ("stxa" means "brother" in Lezgi), at least :). I ain't no Japanese :)
Fair point. But look at the Volte's original post - it's full of highly abstract grammatical terminology. I took that as a sign that he IS interested in theoretical debates. 'to' has a lot of functions in Polish, some of which are hard to analyse. If you (generic you) are not into splitting hairs, you can just assume that 'to' = 'this' / 'this one' /'it' but be aware that it's a big oversimplification. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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