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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 21 08 August 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No problem, but also thank emk and vermillon. The accusative and direct object merge to vary degrees but there are languages where the "accusative" is use to account for inflection that has nothing to do with direct objects (e.g. time expressions), while direct objects can take endings that are not "accusative" (e.g. negated direct objects taking genitive or partitive in some Slavonic languages or Finnish respectively). That's interesting about the Russian distinction for negated direct objects, as I came to gather that Russian's "negative genitive" was effectively confined to negated possession instead (e.g. У меня нет ничего). In the Slavonic languages that I know best, I'm apt to translate the second Russian sentence implying the non-existence of the letter using "(not) any" (žádný etc.), yet this would have no effect on using accusative or genitive in these languages. RU: Я не писал письмо. / Я не писал письма. CZ: Nepsal jsem dopis. / Nepsal jsem žádný dopis. (accusative for both) PL: Nie pisałem listu. / Nie pisałem żadnego listu. (genitive for both) SK: Nepísal som list. / Nepísal som žiadny list. (accusative for both.
Muahahahah >:-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 21 08 August 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Я не (на)писала никакого письма sounds much better than Я не (на)писала никакое письмо to me. Quite an ironic example, as this would make me think: yeah, of course you never write letters or read books, that's why you speak like that.
Finnish influences me greatly though, to the point of always using the genitive where other natives would find it weird:) Edited by Serpent on 08 August 2012 at 9:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 21 09 August 2012 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sort of. :-) French has a plural definite article des, which looks exactly like "of the" (plural), and which can be used almost anywhere. There are also two partitive articles, du and de la, which are singular versions of the same thing. For the negative, however, you drop the "the", and get a bare "de". So you could write:
If you squint at (2) in isolation, you could convince yourself it's a negative genitive. But then you still need to explain (1), which looks like a slightly different flavor of genitive, except it behaves like a perfectly ordinary noun phrase beginning with a (partitive) article. I find that if I try to learn these grammatic details by relating them to English grammar (or Latin or German), my compositions on lang-8 get corrected savagely. But if I just let French be French, I make a lot fewer mistakes. As another example, the difference between the French passé composé and the imparfait certainly looks a lot like the difference between "I did" and "I was doing". But if I rely too heavily on that analogy, I make lots of mistakes. The rules are very subtly different in French, and they ultimately need to be accepted on their own terms. Lang-8, once again, has been amazingly helpful in forcing me to come to terms with this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 12 of 21 09 August 2012 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why do you think so? Prepositions в, к do not depend on whether you talk about a place or a person. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 13 of 21 09 August 2012 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@emk: perhaps it's always possible to consider the partitive as a sort of genitive. (but that doesn't fit as nicely in my understanding of Slavic negated object...). Anyway, whatever my mental representation of French grammar might be, it may probably not affect the way I speak, French being my mother tongue!
A link about the origin of the partitive: http://gendocs.ru/v2303/article_devant_les_noms_de_matire_ac %D1%81ompagns_dun_complment_attributif 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5856 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 21 10 August 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Please do note that I am replying in the context of prepositions with verbs of motion and the verb быть. According to most Russian grammar books, в and на + accusative/prepositional are used for objects and places, while к + dative is used commonly for people and pronouns when used with verbs of motion and быть(or verbs indicating position like находиться). Of course, one may use к + dative for places or object with verbs of motion, where it means that the subject is heading in the direction of the noun in the dative case after к, but it is not the destination of the subject, as in the case of в and на. Finally, we also have idiomic use of these prepositions such as в этом случае(in this case) and к сожалению (unfortunately), which effective means these prepositions may take any noun. However, it is not the main focus in the previous post which I have written. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5856 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 15 of 21 10 August 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Chung, considering how different in the ways Finnish handles the direct object, as well
as the fact that it is in a totally different language family from the languages I know or dubbed, Finnish as definitely make it to my hit list. I believe it will add spices to the conversation with my friend mentioned in the first post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 21 10 August 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The same is with people. The choice of preposition does not depend on whether it is used with a person or a place but on the meaning. В него летит мяч. Grammar books are wrong. The usage of the prepositions in these cases is not idiomatic. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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