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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5573 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 17 27 February 2011 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wonder if it would hinder students as much to think that what's called accusative usually or often plays the role of a direct object as it seems to hinder them to think that accusative equals direct object.
Or, to put it differently: Is the problem the flawed model the explanation based on; a model that works more or less between Germanic and Romance languages? Or comes the problem from using that kind of model at all? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6510 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 17 09 August 2011 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The central theme here is: if you want to explain some grammatical phenomenon in some target language, should you then use other languages to explain it or try to explain it exclusively within the boundaries of the target languages? And I would generally think that you should introduce it using references to known languages (not necessarily your native language) even if the message is that it is different.
Sometimes it will actually turn out to be simpler to accept that you don't have a paragon in your 'old' languages, and then you may have to show a lot of examples and divide them into categories and subcategories in the hope that some kind of system appears at the end of the tunnel. But even a partial comparison may be helpful. For instance I found out that both adjectivelike 'things' and subordinatelike 'phrases' in Bahasa are attached to substantivelike 'things' using the 'connector thing' "yang". OK, we don't have connectors with adjectives at nouns in my other languages, but it is a wellknown phenomenon with subordinate phrases so I just think of "yang" as a relative conjunction used with both phrases and adjectives. It also reminds me of some types of comparisons. OK, message understood. And after that I'll just use "yang" without referring to other languages - I only used the comparison to help me through the introduction phase. Actually this reminds me of learning a word through a translation: you only have to be made aware of its existence and learn one or two central meanings and its morphological class, the rest will follow automatically when you meet or use that word in practice. As I have written in another thread I like to use the same terms (typically from Latin) when I study different languages. But I have long ago discovered that the uses of different cases may differ vastly. In some cases it may be necessary to introduce a term that wasn't relevant for Latin (like the Greek "Aorist" or the "instrumental" or "prepositional" cases of Russian), but even when I describe the differences I prefer using the same terms across language borders as long as it makes sense. After all those explanations are there to help me grasp a system and its position in relation to other systems, and nothing else. From the moment I have grasped and internalized the principles I stop walking around thinking subject: nominative, verb: present indicative, object: accusative... Edited by Iversen on 09 August 2011 at 8:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6963 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 17 21 April 2012 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I stumbled upon a somewhat similar study which examines whether the typological similarity of the definite conjugation in Hungarian and Erzya accelerates the mastery of Hungarian definite conjugation by native-speakers of Erzya compared to those who are not native speakers of Erzya. The study concludes tentatively that time spent by learners in the target-language's environment likely helps more to learn correct use of the Hungarian definite conjugation rather entering studies with knowledge or mastery of the concept from Erzya.
However this study's conclusion differs from the one about learning the Finnish direct object on Indo-European terms of the "accusative" since that study found that what helped more with mastery was effective instruction in the "non-traditional" (read: "non-Indo-Europeanized" approach) rather than immersion in Finnish settings. In this Hungarian study, all students had on average been learning Hungarian for 4 years but differed in that the Erzyan students had been learning Hungarian using much Erzyan and/or Russian as the intermediary languages while the non-Erzyan students had been learning Hungarian in Hungarian. The study also noted that the average non-Erzyan student had been spent on average 1 year in Hungary, while the Erzyan students had spent on average 1 month in Hungary. Nevertheless this indirectly supports the point in my original post that learners of a target language should be prepared to learn a given concept or structure on its own terms. Looking at it through the "lens" of one's native language and trying to shirk from the work involved in acquiring the target language seems to cause more problems (i.e. lack of mastery) than it apparently solves. The Erzyan's students "hard-wiring" for the concept of definite conjugation from their native language seemed to be of little use when learning the concept as applied in Hungarian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6404 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 12 of 17 23 April 2012 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Interesting... I don't think accusative is such a beast - after all, when learning the vocabulary, it is easier to know that the verb is used with the accusative, rather than to say "it's used with the genitive, nominative or partitive depending on the type of the sentence" :D why bother?
But as a native speaker of Russian I probably view this differently than say native speakers of English do. We have a lot of "opportunities" to turn an indirect object into a direct one, to give it a more important role in the sentence. I don't really try to guess whether a verb is transitive based on whether it is in Russian or English, I just absorb this or look it up (whether it's Finnish, Portuguese or whatever). So basically I think it's fine to compare it with the accusative/direct object - just don't try to predict anything based on your native language! During the time you spend wondering whether it's a direct object and trying to remember examples, you may as well look it up. BTW I just remembered how my first textbook called it an accusative object, not a direct object. Makes sense, I think. Hm. Perhaps that's also part of my problem with German. I've had too much classroom study and too little independent study. I still vividly remember my teacher explaining that Germans say поздравлять кому, congratulate to whom. And this is less logical than the Finnish "search/find from somewhere" (etsiä/löytää/löytyä mistä tai miltä). Need to work on that in German, to really accept that any case for any meaning is okay. Interestingly, even as a kid I don't remember having any difficulty with the expression "I like" in English, rather than "to me likes" in Russian (and also Spanish, German, Italian, though I obviously didn't know this). I must've been open-minded linguistically as a kid:) Edited by Serpent on 23 April 2012 at 10:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4415 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 13 of 17 23 April 2012 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Even though I am only learning French, I think your message still has relevance for
those learning their first foreign language. For example, when I first started learning French, I thought that all languages were 100% equal, and everything translated directly between them. A bit absurd, but I was a young. After struggling with simple things like the fact that possessive adjectives did not agree with the gender of the speaker in French, I made my realisation: stop trying to translate directly. Sometimes it is better to struggle with a concept at the start, while accepting that it is something you don't understand completely. After repetition, it will eventually come naturally (of course not as easily with languages that are less related to the ones you speak). Like the study said, shortcuts end up being more of a hindrance to comprehension than they are a help. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6963 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 17 24 April 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In contrast I find the Finnish direct object to be a deceptively difficult concept for beginners without a background in any Finnic language (as observed in my classmates in my Finnish course) and it certainly bedevilled me for a while. Now I've got to the point where I understand the principle in Finnish and I estimate that about three quarters of the time I can decline the direct object correctly on the first try (i.e. use the proper case). For myself, the problem was that I had long viewed the "accusative" markers as synonymous with the direct object drawing on the experience in all of the languages that I had studied before (Estonian was the exception but even then I didn't see it as a big problem as I never went as deeply into Estonian as I have with Finnish. If I had used Estonian as much as I have Finnish, it would've become apparent at that time that I had a serious gap in my understanding of the Finnic direct object). Even the potential problem where some Slavonic languages use genitive for masculine animate substantives or a negated accusative didn't bother me since it wasn't much of an adjustment on my previous "wiring" where direct objects, negated or not, are declined in "accusative". The problem that I was experiencing is indirectly shown in this post where koba asked me to contrast Finnish from Hungarian.
A variation of my final point in my response to koba was that I found it counter-intuitive that I'd need to focus on declension of a direct object when in other languages I'd consider conjugation (or use a different verb) to deal with something particular about the transitive verb. Essentially I was struggling with a Finnic expression of telicity. To reinforce the difficulty that I was having, here're few more sentences that've seemed "intuitive" to me for typically non-analytic nominative-accusative languages. "Chung, what're you doing? - I'm buying a new jacket." Chung, što radiš? - Kupujem novu jaknu. (BCMS/SC) Chung, čo robíš? - Kupujem novú bundu. (Slovak) Chung, mit csinálsz? - Veszek új bundát. (Hungarian) "Chung, what're you going to do? - I'm gonna buy a jacket." Chung, što ćeš raditi? - Kupit ću novu jaknu. (BCMS/SC) Chung, čo urobíš? - Kupím novú bundu. (Slovak) Chung, mit csinálsz majd? - Megveszek új bundát. (Hungarian) In these languages (and others), I left the direct object alone (i.e. novu jaknu, novú bundu, új bundát) and indicated nuances about the action by modifying the verb or verb phrase. That seemed understandable. In contrast for Finnish: Chung, mitä teet? - Ostan uutta takkia. Chung, mitä teet? - Ostan uuden takin. For the longest time, I would use the genitive form since I initially got into the habit of thinking that Finnish simply merges the accusative and genitive for singular nouns and adjectives thanks to most of my references consistently labelling the genitive singular's ending as an accusative one. The partitive on the other hand seemed strange to me in this situation since my courses initially got me into the habit of analyzing it as meaning that I'd somehow be buying part of the coat. I repeat: I couldn't get for a long time that Finnish often indicates nuances in the action/verb by modifying the direct object instead of modifying the verb or using a new verb altogether as I had become used to. My frustration with the topic culminated in my basically starting from scratch and abandoning the descriptions in most of my textbooks and Karlsson's reference manual all of which to varying degrees conflate the Indo-European concept of accusative with the Finnish one. Instead I re-thought the choice of case for the Finnish direct object as a flow chart and created examples demonstrating the correct choice of case for the direct object in as many situations as I could think of. At the time, the best course that I had for dealing with the complexity of the direct object was Maija-Helikki Aaltio's old "Finnish for Foreigners 1" which teaches the topic as the "direct object" and limits use of the term "accusative" to personal pronouns (e.g. minä ~ minut). She tries not to get users into the habit of linking accusative to the direct object as other material does (e.g. Karlsson's grammar, Vähämäki's "Mastering Finnish") per the Indo-Europeanized bias on the topic as described in the Dutch study. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6404 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 15 of 17 24 April 2012 at 1:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
IDK, maybe the textbook I used was just pretty good. It stated at once that the accusative comes in the shape of three cases, as soon as it introduced the accusative in the first place. Maybe I'm thinking too much about the literal meanings of the terms haha. To me a direct object is what that directly undergoes something, while an "accusative object" is just an object in the accusative. How would you prefer to see it explained in a dictionary which form the verb uses? As you know quite many always use the partitive - and some always use the genitive. (not that I like the idea of indicating usage simply by showing examples, without stating how universally they should be interpreted) Edited by Serpent on 24 April 2012 at 1:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6963 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 17 24 April 2012 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wouldn't be surprised if your textbook had been that good (it likely was better than the beginners' courses for Finnish that are readily available to us in the Anglosphere - I got lucky by scoring "Finnish for Foreigners 1" and really focusing on its explanations of the direct object to the point of "erasing" what I had tried to assimilate from Karlsson's book, "Mastering Finnish", "Teach Yourself Finnish" etc.).
The difference is that I had come to equate direct object with accusative as my studies and instruction in other foreign languages more or less allowed this equation to become entrenched (Estonian and Finnish were my 12th and 14th languages respectively and thus I was already wired quite tightly for some concepts!) I'm thankful that learning Finnish (and to a lesser degree Estonian) stretched my mind here :-) (As someone who has been wary of "popularity" and fads, I've become ever happier about learning Finnish and the other Uralic languages since they have yielded a greater sense of joy in discovery than the other languages that I've studied as I uncover means of linguistic expression and characteristics unknown to me from revolving in "popular" languages.) When it comes to my preference for showing/teaching examples of case governance of verbs, I'm usually satisfied when the dictionary's entry just shows a few examples of frequently-occuring usage. This dictionary from Gummerus is a decent combination of coverage and the number of examples given for entries. In an ideal world, a perfect resource would have entries that combine for example this entry with this one. I'd get information about the conjugation (the full table isn't that necessary; the core forms for conjugation would suffice), examples where the case governance is clear, and any relevant notes on usage. The best resource that I've ever seen about case governance of verbs is Stanisław Mędak's “ Praktyczny słownik łączliwości składniowej czasowników polskich”. It lists 1001 verbs with notes on case governance, examples illustrating the governance, and circumlocutions and/or partial synonyms of the "headline" verb. It's as if Mędak had picked detailed entries of the verbs from a large monolingual dictionary, transferred them to his book and added more relevant information to them. Do you know of anything comparable for Finnish, Serpent? 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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