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Are we talking about the same thing?

  Tags: Grammar | Japanese | Russian | French
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
21 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
Chung
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 9 of 21
08 August 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
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.


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.

QiuJP wrote:
Now I feel like learning Finnish.......


Muahahahah >:-)
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Serpent
Octoglot
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serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 10 of 21
08 August 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged 
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

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emk
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 Message 11 of 21
09 August 2012 at 4:32am | IP Logged 
vermillon wrote:
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.


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:

Quote:
1. Il y a de la glace sur la rivière.
There is ice on the river.

2. Il n'y a pas de glace sur la rivière.
This is no ice on the river.


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.
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Марк
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Russian Federation
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 Message 12 of 21
09 August 2012 at 9:57pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
   к + dative when referring a movement to a person.


Why do you think so? Prepositions в, к do not depend on whether you talk about a place or
a person.
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vermillon
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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 Message 13 of 21
09 August 2012 at 10:26pm | IP Logged 
@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
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QiuJP
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 Message 14 of 21
10 August 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
QiuJP wrote:
   к + dative when referring a movement to a person.


Why do you think so? Prepositions в, к do not depend on whether you talk about a place
or
a person.


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.
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QiuJP
Triglot
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Singapore
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Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 15 of 21
10 August 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged 
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.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 16 of 21
10 August 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged 
QiuJP wrote:
Марк wrote:
QiuJP wrote:
   к + dative when referring a movement to a
person.


Why do you think so? Prepositions в, к do not depend on whether you talk about a place
or
a person.


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.

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.


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