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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5856 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 21 06 August 2012 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recently, I have an interesting conversation with my friend who has obtained a high
proficiency in Japanese. We talked about the language we are most interested in and compared their grammar, syntax, structure etc. He, without exception, talked about Japanese and I have chosen to talk about Russian. Here are some of the most interesting parts we have discussed about: … Me: In Russian, the accusative case is used primary to mark out the object in the sentence. Him: That function is indicated by the particle o (を) . Me: The accusative case is also used with the preposition в or на to indicate time as well as to indicate movement towards a place. Him: That’s interesting. On the other hand, Japanese use ni(に) to indicate time and as well as to indicate movement to a place. The latter meaning can be expressed by e (へ) as well. Particle にis also used for indicating indirect object and for showing the agent who performs the action in passive, causative and passive-causative sentences. に also many uses which will be very long to list down specifically. Me: Wow, I didn’t know as much as you. In contrast Russian use the dative case to indicate an indirect object and the instrumental for the agent in the passive voice. As for the causative sentences, it is also indicated by various cases if I have remembered both Japanese and Russian grammar wrongly! … Him: Some Japanese verbs have both intransitive and transitive form which differs in the kana. Me: This also happens in Russian too! The intransitive and transitive form differs only in the ending –ся. Only the verbs of motion have forms from different roots. … Of course, we have discussed many other grammatical points, including whether wa(わ), ga (が) in Japanese is equivalent to the nominative case, instrumental case in Russian. After such a long story, I want to find out the opinions whether we have correctly identified the equivalents in the two languages? This is surely a lively discussion which I hope is constructive and also highlights the difficulty of translating. 3 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 2 of 21 07 August 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
*correction wa should be written as は(ha). Anyway, there is another discussion that is related to this subject. Most French teachers I know prefer to refer direct objects pronouns as COD (complèment objet direct) and indirect object pronoun as COI (complèment objet indirect). As someone who as learnt inflectional languages, I immediately recognize them as the accusative case and dative case respectively. However, whenever I ask them if it the COD is equivalent to the pronoun in accusative case or if the COI is equivalent to the pronoun in the dative case, most French teachers not only say no, but also have no idea of the terms. Those who answered yes to the question have usually learnt German during their school days, but have also advised me not to confuse other students. I find these puzzling as the terms "accusative" and "dative" are standard terms which anyone with a strong grammar background should understand. Hence, I am wondering if the French teachers and I are talking about the same concept or radical different ideas? 2 persons have 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 3 of 21 07 August 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
"Accusative" and "dative" aren't really major distinctions in French grammar, though they might be metaphorically useful if you already know some Latin or German. As far as I know, there's only a handful of situations where those distinctions make sense: * The relative pronouns qui and que are "nominative" and "accusative", respectively. * The object pronouns le/la/les and lui/leur are "accusative" and "dative" respectively. But you can't really say that moi is accusative and je is nominative, because of situations like this: Je vais au marché. Luc et moi allons au marché. Here, moi is a disjunctive pronoun, and not a real accusative at all. If you start comparing grammar across languages, sometimes it's directly applicable, and sometimes it's more of a handy metaphor. Now, someday I'd like to argue that au/à la/aux/(y) and du/de la/des/(en) are really strange prepositions (EDIT), and it's almost better to think of them as clitic inflections at the start of a noun phrase. But that's another discussion. Edited by emk on 07 August 2012 at 6:01pm 7 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 4 of 21 07 August 2012 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think emk summed it very well.
I would say that indeed, COD/COI are NOT the same things as accusative/dative. Why? -Because these terms don't refer to the same feature. The accusative (in languages that use this terminology) can mark the direct object, but it can also mark the place where you're moving to, a length of time etc. You wouldn't say that in the sentence "I've lived here for 10 years", "for 10 years" is the direct object of the verb "to live", would you? It's in the accusative case, though (at least in Latin, Old English, and I suppose others...). In Slavic languages (and surely others, French looks similar to me here) the direct object of a negated verb (I don't want any bread) is in the genitive... but that doesn't make it a "possession", it remains the object of the verb. -French doesn't decline words, or about as much as English. And when you apply a rule like that of the agreement of the past participle, it makes sense to describe the position of the participle compared to that of the "direct object". It would be comparing oranges and carrots to compare the position of the "participle" and of the "accusative". Of course, it helps a lot to have this mental picture to help you, but no teacher will let you say that in front of his students. :) 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 5 of 21 07 August 2012 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
To me au/à la/aux/(y) and du/de la/des/(en) are overworked prepositions from the Russian prospective. du/de la/des/(en) is often equivalent to the genitive case when it means "of", while the meaning of "from" is translated by 3 prepositions + the genitive case in Russian(от, с, из)! Similarly, au/à la/aux/(y) is often equivalent to в or на + preposition case when referring to a stationary location, у + genitive case when referring to a stationary location of a person, в or на + accusative case when referring a movement to a place and к + dative when referring a movement to a person. Look how much work these French prepositions are working! On the other hand, the preposition по in Russian is way overworked. In my Russian grammar book, it can mean at least 10 different things with the dative case. But I think a Russian speaker will be in a better position to explain this. Edited by QiuJP on 07 August 2012 at 5:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 21 07 August 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Swedish doesn't use case markers other than pronouns (and some set phrases) but despite that, "anyone with a strong grammar background" can identify the case (=function) of any noun in any sentence, and every kid in school are taught the basics of grammar (parts of speech;subject, predicate, accusative, dative and so on). It will come in handy when they start learning other languages. And it's considered general knowledge.
With this in mind, most would say that "the car" (as in "I sold the car.") is accusative, even if "the car" isn't declined in any way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 7 of 21 07 August 2012 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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emk and vermillon illustrate the point well in that as one broadens the scope of languages, it pays to put in perspective the degree of typological or structural similarity between the languages that one learns.
On this point of equating direct object with the accusative, may I remind anyone that letting this idea become canonical after having trodden a well-worn path in a handful of Indo-European languages may not be the best as I posted some time ago:
To this I should add that the marking for the Finnish object is indeed different to most outsiders and signifies features that are either ignored or marked by different means in other languages. Basically the Finnish direct object is marked to reflect at least one of aspect, definiteness of the object (part of telicity) or affirmativeness. Another way to look at it is that a Finnish direct object can draw its endings (or lack thereof) from 4 cases (in comparison, the Finnish indirect object is less complex as it's usually covered by one case, allative, which in turn i more often viewed as one showing physical movement) Here're are a few examples of how I suspect those Dutch students in the study were led off into the weeds by the Finnish direct object thanks to their traditional "Indo-Europeanized" teaching method. I'll use examples from Czech and Polish too since marking for aspect is obvious in the verbs rather than the object, and in Polish, direct objects regularly differ depending on affirmativeness (I don't think that they do in Russian). (Nominative) EN: Here's a letter. CZ: Tady je dopis. PL: Tu jest list. FI: Tässä on kirje. (Direct object) EN: What are you doing? - I am writing a letter. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Co děláš? - Píšu dopis. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) PL: Co robisz? - Piszę list. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) FI: Mitä teet? - Kirjoitan kirjettä / Olen kirjoittamassa kirjettä. (marked in partitive - focus is on the action that has not ended (i.e. somewhat similar to imperfective aspect), and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) is not complete.) EN: What are you doing? - I am writing (some) letters. (looks the same as the nominative pl.) CZ: Co děláš? - Píšu dopisy. (looks the same as the nominative pl.) PL: Co robisz - Piszę listy. (looks the same as the nominative pl.) FI: Mitä teet? - Kirjoitan kirjeitä / Olen kirjoittamassa kirjeitä. (marked in partitive pl. - focus is on the action that has not ended (i.e. somewhat similar to imperfective aspect), the quantity or definiteness of the letters (i.e. direct objects) is not known, and/or the direct objects are not "complete" .) (Direct object) EN: What will you do? - I'll write a letter. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Co uděláš? - Napíšu dopis. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) PL: Co zrobisz? - Napiszę list. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) FI: Mitä teet? - Kirjoitan kirjeen. (marked in genitive* - focus is on the action that will end (i.e. somewhat similar to perfective aspect), and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) is intended to be complete.) * in the past, a Finnish direct object ending was -m but over time this suffix got merged/blurred with the genitive -n to the point where today we use the canonical genitive ending for the direct object here (cf. tässä on äidin kirje "here is mother's letter", hän lukee äidin kirjeen "he/she will read mother's letter") (Direct object) EN: What will you do? - I'll write the letters. (looks the same as the nominative pl.) CZ: Co uděláš? - Napíšu dopisy. (looks the same as the nominative pl.) PL: Co zrobisz? - Napiszę listy. (looks the same as the nominative pl/) FI: Mitä teet? - Kirjoitan kirjeet. (marked in nominative pl. - focus is on the action that will end (i.e. somewhat similar to perfective aspect), and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) is intended to be complete.) (Direct object) EN: Why aren't you writing a letter? (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Proč nepíšeš dopis? (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) PL: Dlaczego nie piszesz listu? (marked in genitive - regular outcome for a direct object of a negated action) FI: Miksi et kirjoita kirjettä? / Miksi et ole kirjoittamassa kirjettä? (marked in partitive - focus is on the negated action, and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) being a complement of a negated or incomplete action.) (Direct object) EN: Write a letter! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Napiš dopis! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) PL: Napisz list! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) FI: Kirjoita kirje! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative - idea is that the positive imperative to a Finn suggests focus on finishing the task (i.e. somewhat similar to perfective aspect). This means that partitive is not used) (Direct object) EN: Don't write a letter! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Nepiš dopis! (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) PL: Nie pisz listu! (marked in genitive - regular outcome for a direct object of a negated action) FI: Älä kirjoita kirjettä! (marked in partitive - focus is on the negated action, and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) being a complement of a negated or not complete action.) (Direct object) EN: I see you / her (marked for personal pronouns except "you") CZ: Vidím tě / ji (marked in accusative - in a certain way it's "accusative/genitive" for "te" (tě)) PL: Widzę cię / ją (marked in accusative - in a certain way it's "accusative/genitive" for "ty" (cię)) FI: Näen sinut / hänet. (marked in accusative (i.e. a distinct case ending, rather than a shared form or ending as with all other substantives) - personal pronouns as direct objects are in their own sub-class when in the affirmative) EN: I don't see you / her (marked for personal pronouns except "you") CZ: Nevidím tě / ji (marked in accusative - in a certain way it's "accusative/genitive" for "te" (tě)) PL: Nie widzę cię / jej (marked in genitive - regular outcome for a direct object of a negated action but in a certain way it's "accusative/genitive" for "ty" (cię)) FI: En näe sinua / häntä. (marked in partitive - focus is on the negated action, and/or the personal pronouns (i.e. direct objects) being complements of a negated or not complete action.) P.S. I realize that these examples may give a slightly misleading impression of Czech and Polish where the direct objects often look as if they're in the nominative. This syncretism / merging holds for substantives in masculine inanimate or neuter. The marking for feminine substantives as direct objects is more explicit while the animate masculine substantives as direct objects show varying degrees of a merger between the accusative and genitive (QiuJ, this should be especially clear when you compare Czech and Russian treatment of animate direct objects). E.g. (Nominative) EN: Here's a book. CZ: Tady je kniha. PL: Tu jest książka. FI: Tässä on kirja. (Direct object) EN: What are you doing? - I am reading a book. (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Co děláš? - Čtu knihu. (accusative) PL: Co robisz? - Czytam książkę. (accusative) FI: Mitä teet? - Luen kirjaa / Olen lukemassa kirjaa. (marked in partitive - focus is on the action that has not ended (i.e. somewhat similar to imperfective aspect), and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) is not complete.) (Direct object) EN: Why aren't you reading a book? (unmarked, looks the same as the nominative) CZ: Proč nečteš knihu? (accusative) PL: Dlaczego nie czytasz książki? (marked in genitive - regular outcome for a direct object of a negated action) FI: Miksi et lue kirjaa? / *Miksi et ole lukemassa kirjaa? (marked in partitive - focus is on the negated action, and/or the letter (i.e. direct object) being a complement of a negated or incomplete action.) * This somehow seems strange to me but it could be just my imagination as it does seem grammatical on the model of sentences using similar forms (cf. olen menossa... vs. en ole menossa...). The point remains though that the marking for a grammatically feminine direct object in Czech and Polish is distinct from the masculine and neuter classes. ...etc., Edited by Chung on 08 August 2012 at 1:44am 9 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 8 of 21 08 August 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chung,
Thanks for the explanation of the difference between accusative case and the direct object. There is one more point that I want to highlight: In Russian, it is also possible to use the genitive case instead of the accusative case after negated verbs. The meaning is illustrated as follows: 1)Я не писал письмо. (accusative case) 2)Я не писал письма. (genitive case) Both sentences mean "I did not wrote a/the letter." However, in sentence 1, it could mean that there is a letter that actually exist, but I did not wrote it. On the other hand, sentence 2 means that there isn't any letter that existed and I did not do any action of writing. This use of the genitive is quite similar to the Finnish and Polish examples you have given. Now I feel like learning Finnish....... Edited by QiuJP on 08 August 2012 at 6:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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