Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 8

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July 8

p. 65 or p.65 ?

I'm accustomed to seeing page numbers written as

p. 65

(American) or

p 65

(British). But within Wikipedia I also find these:

p.65

and

p65

I don't recall that I've ever seen those anywhere besides Wikipedia. Are they conventional somewhere? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No. It is nonstandard to omit the space between the abbreviation and the page number. If I came across such a mistake, I would correct it. Marco polo (talk) 01:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, the space should be a non-breaking space (  in markup) so you don't get a line break between the "p(.)" and the number. Angr (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

There are many many thousands, maybe millions, of instances of this in Wikipedia. Clearly lots of people are editing here who think it's standard. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it's particularly common among those for whom English is a second language. I'm presuming there are similar abbreviations in other languages - do they use a space? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, well, I think having two spaces after a full stop (period) is standard and Wikipedia won't stand for that, so I'm not going to get too worked up over the number of spaces in the instance of an easily understood abbreviation... Matt Deres (talk) 19:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You're mistaken: Even those who put two spaces after a period do that only when it's a period marking the end of a sentence---not when it's the period in "Dr. Smith" or "p. 65". Michael Hardy (talk) 18:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm pleased to hear of someone else who uses two spaces after a full stop. I was beginning to think I was the last surviving user of this convention! Dbfirs 21:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe they put p.nnn instead of p. nnn precisely to avoid a line break, since that "non-breaking space" is not likely to be known by the average editor. In e-mails I use two spaces after a period, which is standard English writing. In wikipedia, you can put 2 or 3, or even 10 spaces in, as I've got within these square brackets [ ] but the display mechanism compresses it down to one. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:13, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I would deny that it's still standard English writing to put two spaces after a period. The Chicago Manual of Style explicitly prescribes just one space after a period or colon, and Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style says of putting two spaces between sentences, "Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit." Angr (talk) 13:04, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Looking through various business communications I've received via e-mail, there's no consistency. And I don't see how Bringhurst figures it matters. You can hit the spacebar once or twice with not much difference in effort or time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:15, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

He's not saying it would save time or effort, he's saying it's unnecessary and aesthetically unappealing. It started out with Victorian typography, which was dark and closely set and needed extra space between sentences. The habit passed over from typesetters to typists, but when typeset text got lighter in the mid-20th century and typesetters stopped making the space between sentences, typists didn't get the news and so generations of people learning to type were taught to put extra space between their sentences even though typesetters no longer did. (Bringhurst also considers the use of the unspaced em dash Victorian and recommends abolishing it in favor of the spaced en dash.) Angr (talk) 05:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I find it much easier to identify sentence breaks when two spaces are used, even in modern typography, but I agree that the convention is falling out of use.   When typing text to be read aloud, with whole sentences to be read at a glance, I often use three or four spaces.   I've just looked at a Victorian novel printed by Thomas Danks of Fleet Street and noticed that he used three spaces between sentences. Dbfirs 19:57, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsson in all Scandinavian languages

What is all the form of Knutsson (son of Knut or Knut's son) in all the Scandinavian languages: Old Norse (bigger priority), Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish and any other form. Please list them with their language next to them. Also is it correct to be rendered as Cnutsson/Cnutson or Canuteson/Canutesson? --Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 02:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsen and Knutssen exist. μηδείς (talk) 02:36, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I would probably stick to the Scandinavian spelling rather than rendering them in an Anglicised form. Canute is in any case considered rather old fashioned, history books now will use Cnut for the famous King (Knūtr is apparently the Old Norse). However I see no reason to use this form in a modern name. 90.214.166.169 (talk) 10:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Knutsson or Knutson in Swedish, at least if it's used as a name. Sjö (talk) 10:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Surnames didn't really exist in Old Norse times, but I think this is how you would say Knut's son: Knūts sonr. Marco polo (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, today's surname was at that time a patronymic.Sjö (talk) 16:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't asking for a surname. I was asking for a patronym. So is there a patronym in Old Norse of a son of a man named Knut?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

A patronymic is produced productively by definition (for example, if you were my father, I would have the patronymic Queen-Elizabeth-II's-Little-Spy-son in Old Norse, and Квин-Элизабет-II'с-Литл-Спаевич in Russian). So the answer to a question such as yours is inevitably yes (just as to the question "is there a sentence so-and-so in Old Norse?"). Now, even though the word "son" is indeed sonr in Old Norse and sonur in modern Icelandic, the patronymics end in -son in the nominative, for some mysterious reason. In the online Icelandic Saga Database, I find only one occurrence of Knútsson in the accusative (same as the nominative), one of Knútssonar in the genitive, but I suppose that's because the name wasn't that common in the first place (searching for occurrences of the name as a given name doesn't yield many results either).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 14:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of Norwegian-Americans named "Canuteson", dating back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Just do a Google search. I don't know what "correctness" has to do with gathering a list of surname variants. Obviously there's no definitive version. LANTZY^TALK 15:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

If there were something wrong with odd last name variants I'd be in trouble on both sides of the family. I could imagine Germany might keep a list though, given they regulate Vornamen. Interesting the German law is not mentioned in the English article. μηδείς (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Also unanswered is what is the Norwegian and Danish form and if Cnuts(s)on is ever used?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Forms with C are either very rare or non-existent (it's not a very popular letter in the Scandinavian languages, compared to English and Romance). The "pure" Danish form is Knudsen. I think the "consistent" (or rather, consistently inconsistent) Norwegian form would be Knutsen, although it is always a contentious issue what constitutes "real Norwegian" linguistically (cf. e.g. Norwegian language struggle). Thus, the Danish version "Knudsen" is also very common in Norway because of the shared linguistic history of the two languages, and in addition, in the opposite extreme, surnames in -son (producing, in this case, "Knutson" as in Sweden) occur as well.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Verbs that take dative (in)direct objects

Consider verbs like German helfen "to help" and Latin parēre "to obey." The complement of these verbs is assigned the dative case (e.g. Ich habe deinem (dative) Vater geholfen "I helped your father"), even though the complement seems more like a direct object rather than an indirect object. How should these complements be labeled: direct objects with dative-case endings or simply indirect objects? And why is the other label unacceptable? Thanks.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

They are only direct objects when translated into English. German and Latin speakers would not regard them that way. We need to describe them from the perspective of those languages, not from the perspective of something irrelevant like English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That's not necessarily true, as with deponent verbs there can be a consciousness that grammatical form doesn't exactly fit underlying meaning and linguists and self-aware language speakers do distinguish between logical and grammatical case, as in the use of the genitive instead of the accusative for animate masculine Russian nouns. There is a huge literature on this. μηδείς (talk) 10:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I am quite sure a German would notice if pointed out to him or from curiosity that helfen is different from other transitive verbs in that it cannot take an accusative object while almost all other transitive verbs can.

Er kauft mir das Buch.

Er hilft mir mit dem Buch. but not

(!) Er hilft mir das Buch.

It doesn't require a knowledge of English to see the exceptionality here. (BTW, how does one indicate a real asterisk rather than a markup bullet?) μηδείς (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

&#42; and <nowiki>*</nowiki> will always give you an asterisk. Angr (talk) 11:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That nowiki will be useful, thanks.μηδείς (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

See case government and government (linguistics), although they are rather stubby articles, and you'll find much more at the library. μηδείς (talk) 11:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Logically / meaning-wise, the complements of "help" and "obey" actually make more sense as indirect objects; you could call the verbs "transitive" based on the fact that they (usually) require a complement, but it still doesn't mean that the complement in question must be a direct object. When you're helping a person, you're not directly affecting or changing them, you're just doing something for them, a typical "indirect object" situation. The same applies even more obviously to obeying. I am myself a speaker of a language (Bulgarian) which uses a dative preposition with both verbs (basically, "I'm helping to him", "I'm obeying to him"), and the Russian and German constructions make perfect sense to me - i.e. I perceive no discrepancy between grammar and semantics here. Indeed, I would guess that when English still had cases, it too used the dative in these situations.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

That's right, Old English had "ic helpe minum freondum", "he Gode þancode", "ic forgiefe ðam þeowum" ("the servants"); in all of these cases Bulgarian has the dative preposition, whereas, interestingly, Russian uses the direct object with the latter two verbs (благодарить and прощать), so there's no universal here. Here's what I find on Google Books in "An historical syntax of the English language, Volume 1, Part 3", p.280-281 by Fredericus Theodorus Visser: "indirect object as sole object" was used with verbs where the "persons or things toward whom or which the action ... is directed in such a way that they may be regarded as a kind of recipient; in other words, the action is - either materially or non-materially - advantageous, serviceable, profitable, harmful or injurious to the person or thing denoted by the object". This includes "verbs of following, serving, obeying" (e.g. folgian, hieran, hiersumian), "verbs of liking, disliking, hating" (e.g. lician), "verbs of happening" (befeallan), "verbs of saying, confessing, reproaching, cursing, threatening" (andswarian), "verbs of injuring, harming, protecting or the opposite" (beorgan), "verbs of pleasing, comforting, honouring, flattering or the opposite" (e.g. forgiefan), "verbs of believing, trusting or the opposite" (e.g. belifan), "verbs of helping" (e.g. helpan), verbs of approaching, adhering, touching or the opposite" (e.g. feolan). Again, in most of these cases Russian would use the dative case and Bulgarian would use the dative preposition.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Verbs in German that take only dative objects include these:

gefallen, gehören, helfen, begegnen, folgen, bedürfen, dienen, huldigen, beitreten, weichen, aus | weichen, nach | gehen, widerfahren, entgegen | fiebern, antworten

(I've indicated separability of prefixes with a vertical slash.) I don't think these are properly considered transitive verbs. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I think there are also verbs that can take both a direct object and an indirect object and you don't have to include both. Thus:

Sie glaubt ihm jedes Wort.

Sie glaubt ihm.

Sie glaubt jedes Wort.

The second sentence above has an indirect object and no direct object (that never happens in English, AFAIK). Michael Hardy (talk) 15:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Should I have added scheinen? "Diese Frage scheint mir besser als die anderen." Michael Hardy (talk) 15:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Bedürfen takes the genitive, not the dative. Angr (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You're right. I extrapolated from a couple of examples in which the objects were feminine singular nouns. With feminine singular nouns you can't tell the dative from the genitive. I think very few verbs behave like this. ("Erinnern" used to take genitive objects in addition to accusative objects. I think a couple of centuries ago people said "Ich erinnerte ihn seines Versprechens", where they now say "Ich erinnerte ihn an sein Versprechen".) Michael Hardy (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, erinnern + genitive sounds quite old-fashioned or elevated nowadays. Gedenken, semantically similar, also takes the genitive. Angr (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's a relevant question: Do sentences using helfen, folgen, etc., with their dative objects, admit passive transformations in which those objects become subjects? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No. These verbs form impersonals rather than passives and the dative object remains in the dative, but thanks to the freedom of German word order, the dative object can move to the front of the sentence. Thus German for "The boy was helped" is Dem Jungen wurde geholfen. Making a true passive out of one of these verbs sounds childish in German: Verona Pooth made some commercials using the slogan "Hier werden Sie geholfen" (instead of grammatical "Hier wird Ihnen geholfen"), which was playing on her image as a dumb bimbo. Angr (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. Maybe that answers the original questions above. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Something a little bit related affects the verb "ask" in English. If you say

I didn't ask her that question.

Then "her" seems like an indirect object and "that question" seems like a direct object. But you can say

I didn't ask her.

despite the fact that presumably a sentence in English never has an indirect object unless it also has a direct object. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The posting from 91.148.159.4 above is quite interesting. I don't have usually have a strong gut feeling for these things. But I mentioned slightly anomalous behavior of the verb "ask" in English above. The German counterpart "fragen" also seems a bit weird to me, in that one says "Was hast du mich gefragt?" whereas somehow "Was hast du mir gefragt?" seems logical. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

English has no problem with using only an indirect compliment.

"I told." "I asked." "I told him." "I asked him." "I told the answer." "I asked the question." and "I told him it." and "I asked him it." are all well formed. μηδείς (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

BTW, I think you're confusing "compliment" with an "i" with "complement" with an "e". I think that pair appears in a list of easily confused words in some Wikipedia page. The complement disambiguation page says "In many different fields, the complement of X is something that together with X makes a complete whole—something that supplies what X lacks. Note the word "complete", since that's a useful mnemonic: a complement makes something complete. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Note also that in Romance the reflexes of adiutare (e.g. Sp. ayudar FR. aider) govern the accusative, as does the preposition ad, but you do find a tendency toward leismo with Spanish, which results more from the use of personal a with an animate object. μηδείς (talk) 19:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

"I told" and "I told the answer" are not good English. But "I didn't ask her" is perfectly fine. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The assignment of particular objects is a subjective choice of the speaker, and depends on polite deferral to others in a hierarchy. There is no way to answer this question without details about the subjective relationship of the speaker to his or her relatives, friends, and memberships. 99.24.223.58 (talk) 22:35, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

@99.24.223.58: That is nonsense. Language has standard conventions that are known independently of the biographies of individual speakers. And some excellent answers have been given here. That's not always true of things posted to Wikipedia's reference desks. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I am sure you are correct, but not sure your assertion is contrary to mine. 99.24.223.58 (talk) 23:48, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what language you speak natively, JackofOz, but a perfectly cromulent response to one sibling with a guilty conscience saying, "I hope you don't tell!" is the other responding, "Sorry, I already told." And a fine response to "Make sure you keep the answer secret" is, "Oops, I already told the answer." Their appropriateness is contextually determined but the statements are perfectly good English and their grammaticality is indubitable. μηδείς (talk) 22:42, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

No, Medeis. There are three different verbs "tell" with different semantics and different subcategorisation frames.

• "Tell" = "impart information" normally takes both direct and indirect objects, but the direct object may be omitted when it is recoverable from context. I think some speakers will allow the indirect object to be omitted, but I wouldn't, ("I told him what I knew". "So I told them".)
• "Tell" = "recount a story" requires a direct object; an indirect object is optional. ("He told a tale of woe")
• "Tell" = "report somebody's wrongdoing" does not take a direct object. It may take an "on" phrase for the person being given away - I'm not sure whether to categorise that as an indirect object or not. ("I'll tell!", "She told on me"). --ColinFine (talk) 00:24, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That's an interesting theory of three verbs, which bizarrely have the same unrelated form, rather than one verb used three ways. How exactly one can tell without context that "I told" necessarily means "I told on you" and not "I told them what happened" amazes. I suppose the exchange "Please don't tell my wife you saw me at the bar last night" answered by "Oh, I'm sorry, but I already told" is bad English? The response should be, "Sorry, I already told on"? μηδείς (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

A native would reply "I/I've already told her", or "I/I've already told on you", but the latter is not considered adult language, so it would probably not be encountered in the context you mention. Childen are the ones who are into "telling on" their friends. Also, a native would not say How exactly .... amazes. More like I'm amazed that one can tell without context that "I told" necessarily means "I told on you" and not "I told them what happened". Or, what you had, but with the word "me" at the end (... amazes me, not just ... amazes). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:09, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There's "tell" in the sense of "order" and "instruct", as well as "inform"; and also "tell" in the sense of distinguish: "you can tell a leopard by its spots", as in the old chestnut "You can tell an Irishman/engineer/Englishman/Scot/noble/Yankee/Old Etonian/Digger/Wikipedian/... , but you can't tell him much!" (with a direct object in the first clause, and both direct & indirect objects in the second). I haven't bothered to dig out the OED, but I'm sure there are at least a dozen numbered entries and several columns for "tell", e.g. "tell" for counting, as in teller's windows or parliamentary tellers. —— Shakescene (talk) 03:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-natives often have trouble with the uses of tell, say and speak. There are story tellers, who tell stories. But we don't say "Please tell a story", rather "Please tell me/us a story". Except if it's a specific story we've already heard and we want others with us to now hear it - "Oh, please tell the story about how you ....". We speak a language, we do not say a language. But we say words, and we can also speak words. We never tell either words or a language. We never speak or say a story. We speak to or with someone, we do not tell to someone or say to someone. But we can say to someone "This is terribly confusing". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:20, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

None of this negates the fact that in the simple everyday "to tell someone (dative) something (accusative)" either or both arguments can be left unstated and the resultant sentence, all other things being equal, be perfectly good English. I am sure it may be embarrassing for people to make the baldly false statement that tell in the simple sense to tell someone something has to have an explicit compliment or have some other sense. But they need never worry so far as I am concerned that their mistakes will be revealed, for I shall never tell. μηδείς (talk) 03:44, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That's a very specific idiomatic phrase, used in a particular context. It can't be generalised. "What did you do today?" - I spent the day telling would only be a meaningful response if uttered by a bank teller. Otherwise, it makes no sense. It would have to be something like I spent the day telling lies or I spent the day telling my subordinates what idiots they all are. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 04:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

You make me laugh. The fact that one wouldn't normally say "I spent the day knowing" has nothing to do with the supposed inability of one to say "I know." But don't worry. I still won't tell. μηδείς (talk) 05:40, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Shall I interpret your first sentence as a compliment or a bit of a put down? It could easily be either, given the foregoing. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 05:54, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Do you seriously expect me to tell? μηδείς (talk) 06:23, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

There's no telling how non-native users of language can make serious errors in their choice of expressions. I assume good faith, naturally, but assumptions do not always reflect reality. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 07:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll Never Tell, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Promise Not to Tell... μηδείς (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

So, to sum up, it is often the case that one language treats the complement of verb with a certain sense as a direct object, while another language treats the complement of a verb with the corresponding sense as an indirect object. While one may discuss which option, if any, "objectively" seems like a more natural expression of the semantics, one ought to consider the possibility that one's intuitions in this regard are predetermined by one's own native language.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:35, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly. I would say that there is a difference, in those languages which have case declensions, between the formal case assigned to the arguments of a specific verb and the logical role which they play. The term direct object usually corresponds with the accusative case, but the patient of certain transitive verbs may be formally expressed in the dative case (Ich helfe ihm, 'I help him' German) or the genitive case (Я удара Ивана, 'I am hitting John' Russian) depending on the verb itself and the language's idiosyncratic treatment of objects depending upon animacy and other factors. Spanish has the phenomena of a personal in which an animate Spanish direct object of either gender is governed by the preposition a ("to" or "at") e.g., Estoy matando a Juan "I am killing John" giving an indirect object form to what is logically a direct object. I would also point out the obvious unreliability of naive statements regarding the subject, and would refer one to reliable sources such as Case (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics)] for more informed opinions on the subject of verbs, their logical objects, and their formal expression. μηδείς (talk) 21:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

But there is no objective reason to consider the complement of "to help" or "to obey" to be, semantically, a patient, rather than a beneficiary/recipient. In other words, there is no objective reason to believe that the accusative is a more direct/natural expression of the semantics than the dative in such cases. You assumed and continue to assume that the discrepancy between syntax and semantics is found in (archaic) Germanic and Slavic rather than in Romance and (innovative) Germanic. I don't think there is any justification for this assumption - the only reason for such a notion is that one happens to be a native speaker of a language of the latter type (as in the case of el Aprel), and consequently finds the former type strange and unnatural.

BTW, your Russian example should be something like "я бью Ивана" (or я ударяю Ивана, but that's more like "I strike John [once]" and isn't very usual). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

As for the useful book you recommended, I note that its author supports my view that the accusative rection of Latin necare "to kill", tractare "to pull" and movere "to move" expresses a different semantic role from the dative rection in auxiliari "to help", parere "to obey" and fidere "to trust" (p.144). In the former case, you have "entities that are directly affected", in the latter - "entities that are not directly affected". BTW, based on these examples, it seems that Classical Latin was not unlike Archaic Germanic and Slavic in this respect.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure how the aspect of the Russian verb is relevant, when it is the genitive form of the object of the Russian verb which was primary in the example--and certainly not the proffered English translation. I am fully get why certain Indo-European verbs have patients in formal cases other than the accusative. But that itself is the issue. There is no way that I am aware of to determine the "objective" way for languages to do things--either they express issues efficiently and sufficiently coherently and sufficiently consistently, or they aren't languages. Sure;y Spanish and Russian with their oblique form objects of simple transitive verbs are no less rational than other languages which lack such constructions. Once again, I simply advise people who are interested to study the languages and their idiosyncrasies themselves, and to read the sources, such as the Cambridge title I suggested above.

Issues like beneficiary versus plain patient are matters of emphasis, ("He was the object of my help", vs. "I provided him with help") not "fact". If they were matters of "fact", language change would not exist.

The only "fact" I would emphasize here is that there are plenty of perfectly cromulent English sentences which use the verb "to tell" without any overt object, and that one shouldn't take the word of even "expert" native witnesses as if it were above reproach. μηδείς (talk) 05:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the form of the Russian verb wasn't important to the discussion, I mentioned it only as an aside to make sure that the information posted here is correct for all purposes (it wasn't just about the aspect, удара is not a Russian verb form at all). No comment regarding the rest, I think everything necessary has been said above.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Btw, it's not the genitive you're seeing in "я бью Ивана" or "я ударяю Ивана". It's accusative; the form just happens to be identical to the genitive in masculine animate nouns that end with a consonant. Had you chosen a feminine example, Mapия for example, it would have been "я ударяю Mapию", clearly accusative. Or even if you'd used Иван's diminutive form Bаня - "я ударяю Bаню", again, clearly accusative. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 08:43, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

So when I said above that there are languages like Russian where a direct object may be formally expressed using the genitive case form depending on animacy and other factors, and then intentionally chose an example that illustrated the point, I was making a mistake which you just corrected? Or did you have some other point? μηδείς (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The reason for this latter disagreement is that Russian paedagogical grammar usually describes those forms, which do coincide with the genitive, as a case of allomorphy. That is, if you learn Russian for practical purposes, you are told that the accusative form of animate masculines such as Иван is Ивана (which just so happens to coincide with its genitive form), whereas the accusative form of дом is дом. After all, the accusative of inanimate masculines and neuters formally coincides with another case, too - this time, the nominative. I don't know which description should be considered correct synchronically for theoretical purposes - diachronically, of course, this situation did arise in the same way as the Spanish type Veo a María = "I see Maria" did, as Medeis mentioned. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Medeis, I don't know why you get all defensive when someone makes an observation about something you write. All you needed to say was something like "Yes, you're right". End of story. Or, if you disagreed with what I wrote, you could have prosecuted your case and I'd have been very open to your argument. Keep it simple and honest; this is no place for mind games. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 20:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

That belligerent and defensive non-answer, Jack, to what it was you meant to correct by your "Btw, what you said is not X. It's Y." formulation, is ironically quite eloquent in its own way. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you insist I spell it out: Yes, you made a mistake, and I corrected it. As you haven't disputed what I wrote, I assume you agree with it - despite all your palaver. How ironic is that! -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:59, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

For the purposes of this thread, 91.148.159.4, it is entirely relevant to bring up the use of the genitive form to mark the direct object role of animate masculine nouns in Slavic in the diachronic context. It's an innovation within Slavic. Slavic grammars don't take a blindly synchronic view and posit a four gender system. The marked nature of the construction is surely obvious even to non-linguists, just as English speakers are aware of the difference between strong and weak preterite verbs, even if they don't know the technical lingo, and German speakers can note the asymmetry between the sentences "Ich half ihm" and "Ich hinderte ihn." The point is that at any level of metalinguistic introspection, even monolingual speakers can note the markedness of verbs with irregular case government, and distinguish between form and role. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Now you're at it again, despite the fact that we've already been through this. Your bringing up Slavic was and is irrelevant, because, whereas the Slavic animacy variation is indeed an instance of "irregular" (or rather untypical, and in any case split) role-to-case mapping (two different cases for the same role), the German one is a case of two different semantic roles receiving two different cases (as the book you pointed me to says for the parallel case of Latin). That is, you were wrong in your assumption that German helfen has "irregular case government" - an assumption which is based on the naive anglocentrist assumption that the complement of helfen in German must have underlyingly the same semantic role as that of help in English. Helfen in German, helpan in Old English, помагать in Russian, помагам in Bulgarian, auxiliari in Latin have perfectly regular government (dative) for their semantic role ("recipient", "beneficiary", "target which is not directly affected" or whatever you wish to call it), and that semantic role in turn is not "irregular" but entirely logical.

Not only do you mistakenly assume that the complement of "help" must have the semantic role of a patient (don't confuse it with "direct object", which is a term for the syntactic entity and not for the semantic role), but on top of it all you also are insisting that even native speakers of languages using the recipient/dative pattern must view it as irregular - even when I explicitly told you that I am a native speaker of a language following the German pattern and I don't perceive it as irregular. If anything, I perceive the English pattern as weird and irregular. Only some hypothetical native speaker that has thoroughly internalized English as a prism through which he views all other languages, including his own, could find his own native pattern "irregular". Concerning Russian - I'm not a native speaker of Russian, but I certainly don't think Russian speakers perceive the accusative=genitive construction as marked either. As I already told you, traditional, teaching-oriented grammars of Russian, also those intended for Russian pupils, simply treat Ивана as the accusative form of Иван, which just happens to coincide with the genitive.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:12, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh, my. Where, exactly did I say Russian or any other language was "weird" or wrong to have a class of verbs which take objects but not direct objects in the accusative case? You are simply assuming that whenever I say something is different that I must be implying it is wrong or inferior. The word irregular simply means following a different rule within the internal context of the language, not "different from English". I guess I can't speak for you on what you do and do not note about your own language. But English speakers, for instance, do note such things as the lack of infinitives and distinct third person forms for auxiliary verbs if they think about it, and they do not need to study languages with full conjugation systems first to do so. Likewise I am quite sure that a German can note the asymmetry in:

• Ich liebe ihn.
• Ich hasse ihn.
• Ich helfe ihm.
• Ich hindere ihn.

just as in your last sentence you yourself note the asymmetry in Russian that only certain animate masculine nouns use a form identical to the genitive case to express the accusative role.

μηδείς (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Let this be my last post in this thread, if you don't mind. It's true that you did not use the word "weird" or "wrong", nor did I at any point believe that you had set out to vilify any language, you just insisted on an Anglocentric analysis of it without taking heed of the counterarguments. You assumed arbitrarily that a disparity between form and meaning was found in the German dative government of "help" and not, say, in the English accusative government of "help" (and German hindern). You assumed that verbs like "help" in German must represent deviations from the general rule (semantic patient = syntactic accusative), whereas English was consistent in following it. This arose from your assumption that their complements must have underlyingly the same semantic role as the one implied by the English government pattern, and that their government contradicted the semantic role of the complements - although I explained how it is, in fact, motivated by their semantics. Similarly, el Aprel originally observed that "The complement of these verbs is assigned the dative case ... even though the complement seems more like a direct object rather than an indirect object". Pray, what made him think that "the complement seems more like a direct object"? Of course, the fact that it is a direct object in English - to a native speaker of a language where it is an indirect object, such as yours truly, such a thought would have never occurred at all. Example quotes: in the German type the "grammatical form doesn't exactly fit underlying meaning"; "It doesn't require a knowledge of English to see the exceptionality here"; there is "irregular case government".

And yes, a speaker can be alerted to the fact that different verbs have different government - but this says nothing about whether he will perceive any one of them as exceptional, let alone that he will perceive as exceptional precisely the verb that has different government from the corresponding English verb. In the case of helfen vs hindern, lieben, hassen - yes, some complements that are not directly affected nevertheless take the accusative. To the extent that there is a semantic rule, that makes them the exception (this brings us to the meaning of "irregular" - it normally doesn't just mean "following a different rule", it means "unpredictably deviating from the general rule" - and these are the unpredictable ones). For example, in the book already cited, after the author has generalized with a view to verbs like auxiliari and parere vs necare and movere that "The accusative encodes entities that are directly affected whereas the dative encodes entities that are not directly affected", he goes on to note that despite this rule, "one cannot predict the case from the role", because some verbs with unaffected entities nevertheless require the accusative (e.g. amare "love" and videre "see"). By the way, the words for "to hinder" have dative government just like "to help" in Russian and Bulgarian (мешать, преча), making them a bit more consistent (or, of course, from an Anglocentric perspective, even less consistent) than German in this regard. Cheers! (and now I'll beg to be excused) --91.148.159.4 (talk) 21:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)