August 19, 2010
New Orleans Drivers
1. When New Orleanians drive — quite intentionally — the wrong way down a one-way street, they go as fast as they can to minimize the time they are committing a traffic violation, thereby quadrupling the danger for the unwary. In parking lot lanes they love to drive as fast as possible, as on a freeway. They like to pop out into a street and then look about to see if anyone is there. I remember once walking on State Street toward Magazine when a motorcyclist popped out of nowhere toward me, driving on the sidewalk. He smiled embarrassedly and went on his way.
2. If a New Orleanian lives in the middle of the block on a one-way street, he’ll drive the street as if it were two-way, going in and out the wrong direction to enter his driveway, always faster than would be safe (get there fast is the rule) so no one will notice.
3. A New Orleanian will never signal a left or right turn. Only outsiders signal. If a New Orleanian has her blinker on, it has no meaning. When making a left turn on a multi-lane road, the New Orleanian in the far left lane may choose to swoop across to the far right line, directly in the path of other drivers turning left. Watch it! When turning left into a side street from a single lane of traffic, the New Orleanian makes a wide sweep to the right and then turns left, believing that a straight-on angle is always the best approach, as though his sedan were an eighteen-wheeler. If you seeing him veering right, watch for the left turn.
4. New Orleanians never slow down on yellow, nor do they stop at a red light they themselves have witnessed turn red (unless, of course, someone is stopped in front of them; New Orleanians try to avoid collisions, if time permits them to think about it). Most New Orleanians actually speed up at a yellow light — move on fast, they reason, before the light decides to turn red.
5. Two-way streets in New Orleans are often narrow, and may be one block off a one-way street running parallel. When New Orleanians drive down a narrow two-way street,with no one coming from the other direction, they hog the road. If another driver advances, or tries to turn into the street, he is lost and forced off the road. The New Orleanian takes the whole road. After all, it’s narrow, and there wasn’t anyone there before, was there? (See 14 below.)
6. New Orleanians are curious by nature. They like to look into the interiors of cars they are following. They want to see up close exactly what you have in your car. They tailgate right behind you, even to the point of forcing you off the road, so they can see what’s in your car. Tailgating, on the other hand, may signal that the driver is impatient and he can’t pass you on the left or on the right, but watch him weave around behind you trying. The only way to get rid of him is to pull off the road— and that doesn’t always work, as he might pull off and try to engage you in conversation. (See 9 below.) Sometimes a curious tailgater will pull alongside you to stop you and talk, right in the street. If you anxiously watch a tailgater in your rear-view mirror you may stir the road rage impulse in him. Better turn off the road.
7. At an intersection when the light turns green, New Orleanians will boldly take a fast and sudden right turn at the expense of frightened pedestrians trying to cross the street at the marked crosswalk. There is no pedestrian walk light outside the CBD (vs. Seattle, Boston, New York, Washington, and cities throughout the world). Standard procedure in our town is to threaten pedestrians, who de facto do not have the right of way. At a stop sign, a New Orleanian will occasionally, in a fit of guilt, stop to permit a pedestrian to cross. Most ot the time the walker has to wait for a long line of cars to pass, all following the leader past the stop sign. As a pedestrian you are expected to wave and bow in gratitude.
8. There’s one case where the driver becomes the offending pedestrian. The New Orleanian driver, when not in his car but walking with a group of four, five or more people, forms a phalanx and marches down the middle of the street as in a parade. All traffic stops. All cars wait patiently. This is New Orleans. New Orleanians don’t walk on the sidewalk, they walk on the street.
9. New Orleanians like to drive as fast as conditions permit — not as they warrant, I say, but as they permit. In quiet residential neighborhoods New Orleanians will speed; it is fun, they believe, to drive fast. If a local road goes on a while without an intersection, beware! The New Orleanian will accelerate up to fifty, sixty, sixty-five. Leake Ave/River Road early in the morning looks like I-10. Try crossing Magazine Street at Audubon Park on foot when the traffic is light. When traffic is heavy, there’s no problem. Try it when a single New Orleanian is barreling down the street. If you are doing twenty-five on Magazine street with no traffic in front of you, a New Orleanian will hug your tail in irritation, just as she does when standing in line at Rite Aid. There’s nobody there — let’s do fifty.
10. New Orleanians, who in the good old days used to drive without insurance or up-to-date vehicle registration, have learned from bitter experience that speeding can’t be proven without witnesses, while failure to yield can be demonstrated. They themselves blithely fail to yield, but are quick to honk at any other offenders — even if it’s someone turning left at a remote stop sign a hundred meters ahead with no other traffic in sight. Honk! Honk! (What? Where?)
11. In major cities of the world, the horn is a signal: Alert! In the old communist states honking your horn was a serious traffic violation; it was forbidden. New Orleanians honk when waiting in lines of cars at a standstill, for whatever cause that is blocked from view. The honk means: I’m irritable, I want to go home. Long honk (lean on the horn): I’m really fed up, y’all. And no one can do anything about it.
12. Parking lots are dangerous, and New Orleanians love to speed in parking lots. Give them an open lane and they will go just as fast as they can accelerate. Never mind who might emerge from behind a car, or what driver or pedestrian or child might fail to see their careening vehicle.
13. When it rains, New Orleanians love to splash down the street in their cars, like little children at play. Pedestrians beware: New Orleanians don’t care if you are splashed along with the car. The harder it rains, the faster they drive. One has to press against the sides of houses to escape the waves they make.
14. Driving in any city is perilous, and New Orleans is no exception. One has to be from here to know where the dangerous intersections lie. New Orleanians like to get as quickly as possible from Broadway to Carrollton, and several cross streets are conveniently without stop signs the whole nine blocks — Oak, for example, is one-way from Broadway to Carrollton without a stop sign. But not so Hampson; there are stop signs at Hampson and Short, one block from Carrollton, but New Orleanians disregard those stop signs and charge right ahead. Drivers on Short Street (a two-way through street paralleling Carrollton) are expected to stop for the Hampson drivers who routinely run the stop sign. After all, it’s only one block from busy Carrollton Avenue — why should we have to stop again one block away? Go for the fender bender instead.
15. Other cities and other countries may have it worse. In Boston or Prague, one has to be from there to have any hope of survival behind the wheel. Nothing in New Orleans compares to the agony of Central European autobahns, where innocents die every day, slaughtered by impatient men and women in fast cars. The point in the Czech Republic, for example, is not to get from point A to point B. Rather, it is to punish the drivers of trucks and other fast cars simply because they exist. We are not like that in New Orleans.
16. However, do not let a New Orleanian loose on a European highway. Women, children, and old men ride bicycles on twisting lanes in the Dolomite mountains of Salzkammergut, and they survive to tell of it. (See 7 above.) Drivers are alert and courteous, above all better trained and, so it seems, somehow more intelligent. Can this be so? Teenagers have to take a difficult course in driving with a large compulsory fee before they get their licenses. Such places do not know our New Orleanian humanity and flexibility. I taught my son how to drive in a remote parking lot in a tiny town in Bohemia, and the locals warned me: this is illegal. Like me, New Orleanians teach their children to drive, God help them.
17. Years ago one would see slow-moving station wagons filled with nuns, driven by a mother superior venturing into the world with an air of unworldly uncertainty. You’d have to watch for these station wagons, say your prayers, count your mardi gras beads. I don’t see them much these days. (By S.Wilson)
18. There are a lot of old cars in New Orleans — my 1979 Toyota hatchback was for a time among their number — which seem patched together with glue and old engine oil. What keeps them going? (By S. Wilson)
19. All in all, for all their faults, New Orleanians are creative drivers. Any road, if wide enough, can become a two-lane road for a New Orleanian (cf. however 5 above). Suddenly one will see a car cruising immediately to one’s right in the parking lane on St. Charles, skimming past parked cars; in a moment, of course, she’s passing you, like people in line at Rite Aid. When New Orleanians want to turn right, they don’t wait in a long single lane of cars at a stoplight. If the opportunity presents itself, the New Orleanian will make a special right-turn lane with himself at the head. These lanes form spontaneously, so watch it when waiting at a light to turn right — someone is already turning in front of you.
20. New Orleans is bad, but it is quaint and old. I am a New Orleanian, quaint and old myself, and I am a New Orleanian driver to the core. Go for it! Geaux for it, as we cheerfully spell it. Never apologize.
gmc
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Professor Retires (3)
Professor Retires (3)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Still without coverage, I go to my bank to open an investigation of the lost first check. One of the associates at my branch of Capital One ventures that the check has been posted to “Unpostable,” a catchall posting for something that doesn’t fit anywhere else. They are going to “research” this for me and try to find my money. Felicia at Crosby has told me that the outcome of their research is that they never saw nor touched this check, as is evident by its opaque destination at an unknown or unrecognizable account, and, to boot, they do not use Bank of America. So they are clean. Do you follow this reasoning? I send a check to Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems, addressed to Crosby’s premium-receiving P.O.Box, and the check goes into a black hole. They are clean? Not in my world, buster.
Donna is now helping me at Crosby. Like Jocelyn, she is very sympathetic and helpful. I tell Donna on 0712 of my next-day express mailing of a second check to Crosby at the premium address, marked ATTN JOCELYN BRADY. Donna promises to set up my coverage as soon as the check arrives and is processed. (Ha, ha.)
Wednesday, 14 July. The check has been on July 13 cashed, apparently by Crosby, or so I believe by scrutinizing the reverse of the check, a week after receipt by next-day express mail. The coverage has not yet been initiated; I buy a prescription (usually costing $30 with insurance) for $217.00, but United Health will perhaps reimburse me. Mrs. Hawkins at Rite-Aid tells me that if my coverage is initiated within two weeks of the purchase of this medicine, Rite-Aid can void the extra charge. I am counting the days.
Thursday, 15 July. Donna calls me from Crosby to say that she has good news. She has initiated coverage, notification of which will be sent to United Health on Friday by Crosby with their regular Friday insurance updates. I may expect it up and running Monday or Wednesday. That would mean reimbursement from Rite-Aid for the prescription. I can do the MOHS surgery on the 28th as scheduled! Good news. Good news, that is, if it all works out.
Monday, July 18. I call United Health Cobra to see what has happened. The call is discouraging. United Health has no record of my Cobra coverage; what’s more, they don’t have a Cobra account with Tulane. I am told to call my HR representative and ask her who has the Federal United Health care Cobra coverage.
I wonder: my son was on UH care Cobra. What does this mean?
Geraline Wesley at Tulane tells me the person in UH Cobra was confused. She will call and tell them to start my coverage.
Superstitiously, I promise not to call back. Maybe something good will happen.
Look back at the review by Simon JF. It’s going to take weeks longer, if that.
I’m trying not to think about it,
gmc
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Still without coverage, I go to my bank to open an investigation of the lost first check. One of the associates at my branch of Capital One ventures that the check has been posted to “Unpostable,” a catchall posting for something that doesn’t fit anywhere else. They are going to “research” this for me and try to find my money. Felicia at Crosby has told me that the outcome of their research is that they never saw nor touched this check, as is evident by its opaque destination at an unknown or unrecognizable account, and, to boot, they do not use Bank of America. So they are clean. Do you follow this reasoning? I send a check to Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems, addressed to Crosby’s premium-receiving P.O.Box, and the check goes into a black hole. They are clean? Not in my world, buster.
Donna is now helping me at Crosby. Like Jocelyn, she is very sympathetic and helpful. I tell Donna on 0712 of my next-day express mailing of a second check to Crosby at the premium address, marked ATTN JOCELYN BRADY. Donna promises to set up my coverage as soon as the check arrives and is processed. (Ha, ha.)
Wednesday, 14 July. The check has been on July 13 cashed, apparently by Crosby, or so I believe by scrutinizing the reverse of the check, a week after receipt by next-day express mail. The coverage has not yet been initiated; I buy a prescription (usually costing $30 with insurance) for $217.00, but United Health will perhaps reimburse me. Mrs. Hawkins at Rite-Aid tells me that if my coverage is initiated within two weeks of the purchase of this medicine, Rite-Aid can void the extra charge. I am counting the days.
Thursday, 15 July. Donna calls me from Crosby to say that she has good news. She has initiated coverage, notification of which will be sent to United Health on Friday by Crosby with their regular Friday insurance updates. I may expect it up and running Monday or Wednesday. That would mean reimbursement from Rite-Aid for the prescription. I can do the MOHS surgery on the 28th as scheduled! Good news. Good news, that is, if it all works out.
Monday, July 18. I call United Health Cobra to see what has happened. The call is discouraging. United Health has no record of my Cobra coverage; what’s more, they don’t have a Cobra account with Tulane. I am told to call my HR representative and ask her who has the Federal United Health care Cobra coverage.
I wonder: my son was on UH care Cobra. What does this mean?
Geraline Wesley at Tulane tells me the person in UH Cobra was confused. She will call and tell them to start my coverage.
Superstitiously, I promise not to call back. Maybe something good will happen.
Look back at the review by Simon JF. It’s going to take weeks longer, if that.
I’m trying not to think about it,
gmc
Monday, July 19, 2010
Professor Retires (2)
July 19, 2010
Professor Retires (2)
Dear Students,
I find myself without insurance, although I sent the outscourcer a check well in advance. I cannot have my cancer surgery without paying $3000, or least a big fat advance. What am I to do?
Joselyn Brady at Crosby was very comforting. I spoke with her several times on July 6, the day I missed my procedure. She was understanding and helpful. My check, cashed on June 8, would be immediately researched and credited. My coverage should be reinstated very soon. She sounded like a freshman at Tulane, a Newcomb freshman, as we used to say. Her compassion and thoughtfulness made me feel a lot better. When I ran on Wednesday, I took my cell phone — a clumsy complication for a runner with a water bottle and an umbrella. (I run/walk a long track, from Cooter Brown’s to the Huey P. Long Bridge and back.) She called me and reassured me.
I think I must have sounded panicked.
I knew there was something wrong with my first payment. After a sleepless night, I got up and drove to the Carrollton Avenue 70118 post office, a difficult destination for the massive construction centering on Carrollton and Earhart, where the very heart of the earth is being exhumed, or so it seems, with traffic jams a mile long every day, from morning to night since February, 2010.
I mailed a next-day delivery Express Mail to Jocelyn at Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems, etc., with a second check to initiate coverage. Jocelyn had told me to go to my bank and get copies of the front and reverse of my first check and fax them to her at Crosby. This I did at once. I was certain the mistake could soon be corrected.
Here is what I read on the reverse of the check:
E - 4516 36
4426241863
101 BOS-003020
Then there is a solid line, followed by:
>011000138<
CR PAYEE ACCT
LACK END GTD
BANK OF AMERICA
As a learned reader of literature and linguistics and a very naive reader of the reverse of bank checks, I saw CRosby in CR (probably means CREDIT). I saw BOSton in BOS. (Not sure yet what that meant.) What is Lack End GTD? Sounds like something from a movie.
Still, I felt better. I was sure everything would be fixed up soon. I rescheduled my MOHS basal cell cancer surgery at the Tulane Cancer Center for July 28. Surely, by that date I’ll be in coverage. I have now mailed about $750 in payments.
I talked to Felicia on 0708, as Jocelyn doesn’t work on Thursday. She told me they are “researching” my check. It will take “several days” for this research to find a conclusion. They will then notify Jocelyn the result and she will call me.
It was then that I looked for reviews of Crosby Benefit Systems online.
Here’s what I found.
Crosby Benefits Kafkaesque nightmare
simonjf's Full Review: Crosby Benefits Systems COBRA Administration July 13, 2009
“So, you want to continue your benefits after leaving your employer and you have to do it through Crosby? Well I pity you. Crosby clearly runs their organization for the benefit of the their clients: your former employer, not for the benefit of you.
Crosby's website pretty much spells this out:
‘How long will it take for my health insurance coverage to be reinstated with the insurance carrier(s) once I have mailed in my initial COBRA payment?
‘Generally speaking, the wait time is 2 to 3 weeks. We understand this may seem like a long time to wait, particularly if you have doctor's appointments or prescriptions to fill. We aim to make this process as smooth and fast as possible considering the logistics involved.’
The process is as follows: COBRA payments are mailed to a bank lockbox. [the reviewer continues] The bank deposits all checks and sends enrollment and payment information daily to Crosby. Once received, enrollment and payment information is loaded/entered into Crosby's system.
Based upon Crosby's system, health insurance enrollment information is generated and sent to the appropriate insurance carrier(s). This process is performed weekly. Once the carrier receives the health insurance enrollment information, our experience is that carriers update their systems anywhere from within 1 to 10 business days. [Note from gmc: This did not happen with my check. It was apparently not entered into Crosby’s system. It must have been lost.]
Therefore, it is best to expect that your coverage will be reinstated approximately 2 to 3 weeks from the date you mail in your payment.
For those clients for whom Crosby does not notify the insurance carrier(s) directly, the process is similar. However, rather than sending information to the insurance carrier(s), the information is sent to the client. The client then forwards the information as appropriate.
Only, this in my experience was wildly optimistic. Yes, it takes over a month for them to reinstate coverage. The 'retroactive' nature of the coverage when implemented may mean that this is less of a problem. UNLESS your providers treat retroactive coverage in the same way they treat out-of plan coverage: covering a percentage of the cost with an initial deductible.
Recommended:
No”
Reading this, I felt a strange relief. I thought: I am not at fault, I am not derelict, they are.” Of course this is so. I needed someone to tell me so. I felt better. Sit down and wait, I said.
Ah yes. I am not the only one.
More horrible complications follow.
gmc
Professor Retires (2)
Dear Students,
I find myself without insurance, although I sent the outscourcer a check well in advance. I cannot have my cancer surgery without paying $3000, or least a big fat advance. What am I to do?
Joselyn Brady at Crosby was very comforting. I spoke with her several times on July 6, the day I missed my procedure. She was understanding and helpful. My check, cashed on June 8, would be immediately researched and credited. My coverage should be reinstated very soon. She sounded like a freshman at Tulane, a Newcomb freshman, as we used to say. Her compassion and thoughtfulness made me feel a lot better. When I ran on Wednesday, I took my cell phone — a clumsy complication for a runner with a water bottle and an umbrella. (I run/walk a long track, from Cooter Brown’s to the Huey P. Long Bridge and back.) She called me and reassured me.
I think I must have sounded panicked.
I knew there was something wrong with my first payment. After a sleepless night, I got up and drove to the Carrollton Avenue 70118 post office, a difficult destination for the massive construction centering on Carrollton and Earhart, where the very heart of the earth is being exhumed, or so it seems, with traffic jams a mile long every day, from morning to night since February, 2010.
I mailed a next-day delivery Express Mail to Jocelyn at Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems, etc., with a second check to initiate coverage. Jocelyn had told me to go to my bank and get copies of the front and reverse of my first check and fax them to her at Crosby. This I did at once. I was certain the mistake could soon be corrected.
Here is what I read on the reverse of the check:
E - 4516 36
4426241863
101 BOS-003020
Then there is a solid line, followed by:
>011000138<
CR PAYEE ACCT
LACK END GTD
BANK OF AMERICA
As a learned reader of literature and linguistics and a very naive reader of the reverse of bank checks, I saw CRosby in CR (probably means CREDIT). I saw BOSton in BOS. (Not sure yet what that meant.) What is Lack End GTD? Sounds like something from a movie.
Still, I felt better. I was sure everything would be fixed up soon. I rescheduled my MOHS basal cell cancer surgery at the Tulane Cancer Center for July 28. Surely, by that date I’ll be in coverage. I have now mailed about $750 in payments.
I talked to Felicia on 0708, as Jocelyn doesn’t work on Thursday. She told me they are “researching” my check. It will take “several days” for this research to find a conclusion. They will then notify Jocelyn the result and she will call me.
It was then that I looked for reviews of Crosby Benefit Systems online.
Here’s what I found.
Crosby Benefits Kafkaesque nightmare
simonjf's Full Review: Crosby Benefits Systems COBRA Administration July 13, 2009
“So, you want to continue your benefits after leaving your employer and you have to do it through Crosby? Well I pity you. Crosby clearly runs their organization for the benefit of the their clients: your former employer, not for the benefit of you.
Crosby's website pretty much spells this out:
‘How long will it take for my health insurance coverage to be reinstated with the insurance carrier(s) once I have mailed in my initial COBRA payment?
‘Generally speaking, the wait time is 2 to 3 weeks. We understand this may seem like a long time to wait, particularly if you have doctor's appointments or prescriptions to fill. We aim to make this process as smooth and fast as possible considering the logistics involved.’
The process is as follows: COBRA payments are mailed to a bank lockbox. [the reviewer continues] The bank deposits all checks and sends enrollment and payment information daily to Crosby. Once received, enrollment and payment information is loaded/entered into Crosby's system.
Based upon Crosby's system, health insurance enrollment information is generated and sent to the appropriate insurance carrier(s). This process is performed weekly. Once the carrier receives the health insurance enrollment information, our experience is that carriers update their systems anywhere from within 1 to 10 business days. [Note from gmc: This did not happen with my check. It was apparently not entered into Crosby’s system. It must have been lost.]
Therefore, it is best to expect that your coverage will be reinstated approximately 2 to 3 weeks from the date you mail in your payment.
For those clients for whom Crosby does not notify the insurance carrier(s) directly, the process is similar. However, rather than sending information to the insurance carrier(s), the information is sent to the client. The client then forwards the information as appropriate.
Only, this in my experience was wildly optimistic. Yes, it takes over a month for them to reinstate coverage. The 'retroactive' nature of the coverage when implemented may mean that this is less of a problem. UNLESS your providers treat retroactive coverage in the same way they treat out-of plan coverage: covering a percentage of the cost with an initial deductible.
Recommended:
No”
Reading this, I felt a strange relief. I thought: I am not at fault, I am not derelict, they are.” Of course this is so. I needed someone to tell me so. I felt better. Sit down and wait, I said.
Ah yes. I am not the only one.
More horrible complications follow.
gmc
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Professor Retires
July 18, 2010
Dear Students,
Well, being now retired I have no students to address, and no practical advice to transmit. So why am I still writing this Russian course blog and what and I writing about? I will have to figure that out, feeling my way. Can’t seem to stop.
What happens to a Tulane professor when he retires? He has to get medical insurance, that’s what happens. All those years being covered by Tulane’s group plan in United Health Care Plan B, my plan of choice, and all those years before United Health Care, all that is over now.
Tulane offers a soft landing parachute with 18 months of extended coverage called Cobra. Fees are high because the insured are coming off of other programs or haven’t found coverage elsewhere. Still, I thought 18 months of the same plan would be a good idea, even at $375 per month.
This sounds pretty boring so far, but wait. We will enter a Kafkaesque nightmare.
I was familiar with Cobra because my son was in that category when he was no longer eligible for my Tulane plan. We made payments to something called ADP Benefit Services in Philadelphia. At first we made online payments, until an announcement came warning that online payments would be subject to a $10 fee. We hastily resumed monthly checks.
For a long time, for months and months, it did not dawn on me what ADP Benefit Services was. With the naivete of an unretired person, I assumed ADP was an insurance company that offered Cobra. I did not even stop to ponder the cognitive associations of Cobra. “A highly venomous snake native to Africa that spreads the skin of its neck into a hood when disturbed.” Am I in good hands with Cobra? Cobras don’t have hands. On the other hand, Jung teaches that the uroboros, or snake swallowing its tail, is a symbol of wholeness.
I learned from Geraline Wesley in Human Resources at Tulane (Personnel to older retired professors than I am) that Tulane was now using Crosby Benefit Systems for Cobra. She didn’t say precisely that Crosby was the outsourcing company for Tulane. If she had, I would have thought of the outsourcer for the Tulane Help Desk, a company based in India, I believe. You could call the Tulane Help Desk and get a lady in Calcutta. You would have to answer a long questionnaire so that the outsourcer could document your call. Then, of course, you wouldn’t get any help. You would be referred to someone else. But I didn’t know about Crosby yet, so it did not occur to me to think of the Tulane Help Desk.
Crosby has nice stationery with lettering light baby blue: CROSBY. In typographer’s cursive: Benefits People. Again in baby blue: Crosby Benefit Systems [sic], Inc. In black non-serif: P.O. Box 929125 Needham, MA 02492-9125.
I got announcements with other addresses in and around Boston: CROSBY, Benefits People, Crosby Benefit Systems, Inc. 27 Christina Street Newton, MA 02461-1953.
Newton had a nice resonance; this is one of the exclusive suburbs of Boston, one with an outstanding public school system, no crime, and mansions everywhere, like Winnetka, Illinois, where I grew up. Newton must be a good place. I was unconsciously building a positive image in my brain for Cobra (Jung’s influence, no doubt).
In late May, I sent Crosby my enrollment form for Cobra. I didn’t send my first check; it wasn’t due until much later, for some reason. My United Health coverage, Geraline cautioned, would run out on June 30, my official retirement, or separation, date. So I sent my check to Crosby on June 2, well in advance.
For premiums, Crosby has yet another address, P.O Box 84320, Boston MA 0284-3020 PLEASE DO NOT SEND CASH. My checks were to be made out to Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems. I actually addressed my envelope to “Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems.” When I mailed it I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. There is no Tulane in Boston. Not at least since hundreds of our freshmen where at B.U. in the fall of 2005. Why hadn’t I written simply Crosby Benefit Systems? I had another funny feeling, that I had written “Crosby Benefits Systems.” But surely the check would arrive at its intended destination. The zip even had nine digits.
The check was received and cashed very quickly, 6-8-2010. It showed up in my online Capital One banking immediately. Excellent, I thought.
I never gave Crosby another thought until July 6, six days into my coverage, when I was checking in for an outpatient procedure at the Tulane Cancer Center. I was told that I had no coverage. My United Health had expired. I explained what I knew about Cobra. The secretary knew a lot more than I did. “Your United Health number will still apply with Cobra, but it’s not showing up. You don’t have Cobra.” I suggested that my Medicare Plan B, which pays outpatient precedures, might be applicable, but my Medicare B is only to supplement basic Major Medical. The secretary looked this up and informed form me of this. I didn’t even know that my Medicare number is my SS plus A. I was getting a fast retirement tutorial from the Tulane Cancer Center secretary. I called Crosby right from the clinic and was told that no check was received and no check was cashed. The secretary at the cancer clinic told me the procedure costs three thousand dollars and that they couldn’t do it without a big down payment.
So I had to go home without insurance.
More later, it gets better
gmc
Dear Students,
Well, being now retired I have no students to address, and no practical advice to transmit. So why am I still writing this Russian course blog and what and I writing about? I will have to figure that out, feeling my way. Can’t seem to stop.
What happens to a Tulane professor when he retires? He has to get medical insurance, that’s what happens. All those years being covered by Tulane’s group plan in United Health Care Plan B, my plan of choice, and all those years before United Health Care, all that is over now.
Tulane offers a soft landing parachute with 18 months of extended coverage called Cobra. Fees are high because the insured are coming off of other programs or haven’t found coverage elsewhere. Still, I thought 18 months of the same plan would be a good idea, even at $375 per month.
This sounds pretty boring so far, but wait. We will enter a Kafkaesque nightmare.
I was familiar with Cobra because my son was in that category when he was no longer eligible for my Tulane plan. We made payments to something called ADP Benefit Services in Philadelphia. At first we made online payments, until an announcement came warning that online payments would be subject to a $10 fee. We hastily resumed monthly checks.
For a long time, for months and months, it did not dawn on me what ADP Benefit Services was. With the naivete of an unretired person, I assumed ADP was an insurance company that offered Cobra. I did not even stop to ponder the cognitive associations of Cobra. “A highly venomous snake native to Africa that spreads the skin of its neck into a hood when disturbed.” Am I in good hands with Cobra? Cobras don’t have hands. On the other hand, Jung teaches that the uroboros, or snake swallowing its tail, is a symbol of wholeness.
I learned from Geraline Wesley in Human Resources at Tulane (Personnel to older retired professors than I am) that Tulane was now using Crosby Benefit Systems for Cobra. She didn’t say precisely that Crosby was the outsourcing company for Tulane. If she had, I would have thought of the outsourcer for the Tulane Help Desk, a company based in India, I believe. You could call the Tulane Help Desk and get a lady in Calcutta. You would have to answer a long questionnaire so that the outsourcer could document your call. Then, of course, you wouldn’t get any help. You would be referred to someone else. But I didn’t know about Crosby yet, so it did not occur to me to think of the Tulane Help Desk.
Crosby has nice stationery with lettering light baby blue: CROSBY. In typographer’s cursive: Benefits People. Again in baby blue: Crosby Benefit Systems [sic], Inc. In black non-serif: P.O. Box 929125 Needham, MA 02492-9125.
I got announcements with other addresses in and around Boston: CROSBY, Benefits People, Crosby Benefit Systems, Inc. 27 Christina Street Newton, MA 02461-1953.
Newton had a nice resonance; this is one of the exclusive suburbs of Boston, one with an outstanding public school system, no crime, and mansions everywhere, like Winnetka, Illinois, where I grew up. Newton must be a good place. I was unconsciously building a positive image in my brain for Cobra (Jung’s influence, no doubt).
In late May, I sent Crosby my enrollment form for Cobra. I didn’t send my first check; it wasn’t due until much later, for some reason. My United Health coverage, Geraline cautioned, would run out on June 30, my official retirement, or separation, date. So I sent my check to Crosby on June 2, well in advance.
For premiums, Crosby has yet another address, P.O Box 84320, Boston MA 0284-3020 PLEASE DO NOT SEND CASH. My checks were to be made out to Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems. I actually addressed my envelope to “Tulane University, c/o Crosby Benefit Systems.” When I mailed it I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. There is no Tulane in Boston. Not at least since hundreds of our freshmen where at B.U. in the fall of 2005. Why hadn’t I written simply Crosby Benefit Systems? I had another funny feeling, that I had written “Crosby Benefits Systems.” But surely the check would arrive at its intended destination. The zip even had nine digits.
The check was received and cashed very quickly, 6-8-2010. It showed up in my online Capital One banking immediately. Excellent, I thought.
I never gave Crosby another thought until July 6, six days into my coverage, when I was checking in for an outpatient procedure at the Tulane Cancer Center. I was told that I had no coverage. My United Health had expired. I explained what I knew about Cobra. The secretary knew a lot more than I did. “Your United Health number will still apply with Cobra, but it’s not showing up. You don’t have Cobra.” I suggested that my Medicare Plan B, which pays outpatient precedures, might be applicable, but my Medicare B is only to supplement basic Major Medical. The secretary looked this up and informed form me of this. I didn’t even know that my Medicare number is my SS plus A. I was getting a fast retirement tutorial from the Tulane Cancer Center secretary. I called Crosby right from the clinic and was told that no check was received and no check was cashed. The secretary at the cancer clinic told me the procedure costs three thousand dollars and that they couldn’t do it without a big down payment.
So I had to go home without insurance.
More later, it gets better
gmc
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Help for Final Exams
Dear Students,
I'll be in my office today, April 28, Weds, from 1-3. If you're taking the 102 final tomorrow, come see me.
For Sunday's test I will be in around noon, so you can see me then. But take the test tomorrow and you can go to Jazz fest on the last day — it's well worth it.
204 students may telephone me in the office at 862-3094, or at home at 862-4918. (Reads like I live at the office. No way, it's just a fluke.)
I've enjoyed my blog. About 73,000 words, a small book. Does anyone know how to extract the text from a Google blog? I suppose I can select the text of each post and copy it to a file. Right?
Счастливого пути! Счастливо!
"Продленный призрак бытия / синеет за чертой страницы, / как завтрашние облака. / и не кончается строка."
Счастливо!
I'll be in my office today, April 28, Weds, from 1-3. If you're taking the 102 final tomorrow, come see me.
For Sunday's test I will be in around noon, so you can see me then. But take the test tomorrow and you can go to Jazz fest on the last day — it's well worth it.
204 students may telephone me in the office at 862-3094, or at home at 862-4918. (Reads like I live at the office. No way, it's just a fluke.)
I've enjoyed my blog. About 73,000 words, a small book. Does anyone know how to extract the text from a Google blog? I suppose I can select the text of each post and copy it to a file. Right?
Счастливого пути! Счастливо!
"Продленный призрак бытия / синеет за чертой страницы, / как завтрашние облака. / и не кончается строка."
Счастливо!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment
Dear Students,
I am being urged to submit my Преступление и наказание textbook, which some of you have learned to love and to hate — odi et amo, said Horace — to Slavica. I think that it is a unique vehicle for learning. (Unique indeed, you may say, sarcastically.)
Well, should I undertake this enterprise I would need to have the text treated with minute corrigenda et addenda, and to have the whole thing typed into Word in exactly the same format I have it now, in a rather small font, pages of somewhat varying length, and glosses on the page in double columns, with brief grammatical notes at the very bottom across the page. Also appendices and general vocabulary.
I’d have to have a Russian-reading typist with sensitivity and intelligence, and pay accordingly. What better wellspring than 204? What would be a fair pay per page? Five dollars a page and mininum $1000 for the whole job? Or double that, or something in between? Is this realistic?
If someone in the class wants to do it, I’d have the advantage in my typist of real familiarity with the work. It would really save my proofreading.
I don’t have any deadline in mind. I think the work should be spaced out over several months, so that the typist’s brain doesn’t become dulled by too much at once. You could start very soon, leave the city for the summer, and finish later (how later? your academic work might distract you from the job).
Do y’all have any thoughts about this?
Thanks,
gmc
Dear Students,
I am being urged to submit my Преступление и наказание textbook, which some of you have learned to love and to hate — odi et amo, said Horace — to Slavica. I think that it is a unique vehicle for learning. (Unique indeed, you may say, sarcastically.)
Well, should I undertake this enterprise I would need to have the text treated with minute corrigenda et addenda, and to have the whole thing typed into Word in exactly the same format I have it now, in a rather small font, pages of somewhat varying length, and glosses on the page in double columns, with brief grammatical notes at the very bottom across the page. Also appendices and general vocabulary.
I’d have to have a Russian-reading typist with sensitivity and intelligence, and pay accordingly. What better wellspring than 204? What would be a fair pay per page? Five dollars a page and mininum $1000 for the whole job? Or double that, or something in between? Is this realistic?
If someone in the class wants to do it, I’d have the advantage in my typist of real familiarity with the work. It would really save my proofreading.
I don’t have any deadline in mind. I think the work should be spaced out over several months, so that the typist’s brain doesn’t become dulled by too much at once. You could start very soon, leave the city for the summer, and finish later (how later? your academic work might distract you from the job).
Do y’all have any thoughts about this?
Thanks,
gmc
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Pushkin's за
Аpril 25, 2010
Он за тобой
Pushkin, like all classical poets, was best at expressing deep emotion with grace and restraint, or with irony, with an epigram; with fewer words rather than more. He often took recourse to grammar to do this. In one famous lyric, addressed to a former girl friend whom he loved and lost, his vocabulary, at the beginning very stylized, veils the strength of his feelings.
Для берегов отчизны дальной
Ты покидала край чужой;
В час незабвенный, в час печальный
Я долго плакал пред тобой.
For the shores of a remote fatherland / You were leaving an alien place;
In an unforgettable hour, in that sad hour / I wept long before you.
Sounds silly in English. Note the sudden extrametric stress on час in the third line, first syllable. This prolongs the third line and makes it depart from the regular three-ict stresses of the iambic tetrameter in lines 1 and 2: для берегов отчизны дальной is - - / - ´/ - ´/ - ´/ - but the third line is ´- / - ´/ - [] ´/ - ´/ - .
The speaker tries to hold on to her and not let her go, to prolong their farewell kiss. O moment, stay!
Но ты от горького лобзанья
Свои уста оторвала;
Из края мрачного изгнанья
Ты в край иной меня звала.
But you pulled away your lips / from this bitter kiss;
From the gloomy land of exile / you called me to another land.
She is calling him to visit her in her own land, leaving the exile where he, Pushkin, finds himself, exiled from Petersburg and now also from her love.
Ты говорила: "В день свиданья
Под небом вечно голубым,
В тени олив, любви лобзанья
Мы вновь, мой друг, соединим
You said: “When we meet again / Under a sky eternally blue
In the shade of olive trees, we will again, my friend, unite our kisses of love.”
Но там, увы, где неба своды
Сияют в блеске голубом,
Где тень олив легла на воды,
Заснула ты последним сном.
But there, alas, where the arches of heaven / shine in a light-blue glimmer,
Where the shade of the olives lay upon the waters, / You slept your final sleep.
So she has died. An old story, told over again and again in the annals of love. But here comes the burst of feeling which makes this story unique and personal, with the stamp of Pushkin alone.
Твоя краса, твои страданья
Исчезли в урне гробовой -
А с ними поцелуй свиданья...
Но жду его; он за тобой...
Your beauty, your sufferings / Vanished in the sepulchral urn,
And with them, the kiss of greeting;
But I wait for it; you owe it me.
First note that the Slavonic лобзание ‘kiss’, has been replaced by an ordinary everyday Russian поцелуй, which is of course the normal word today. “I am waiting for it (поцелуй);” it is on your account, you promised it to me and you must give it.
The last line, where all the feeling rushes to the surface, is the most ordinary in its vocabulary. Note за with the instrumental here (see previous blog); it stands behind you, you are responsible for it, you answer for it, you ‘have’ it in your control.
gmc
Он за тобой
Pushkin, like all classical poets, was best at expressing deep emotion with grace and restraint, or with irony, with an epigram; with fewer words rather than more. He often took recourse to grammar to do this. In one famous lyric, addressed to a former girl friend whom he loved and lost, his vocabulary, at the beginning very stylized, veils the strength of his feelings.
Для берегов отчизны дальной
Ты покидала край чужой;
В час незабвенный, в час печальный
Я долго плакал пред тобой.
For the shores of a remote fatherland / You were leaving an alien place;
In an unforgettable hour, in that sad hour / I wept long before you.
Sounds silly in English. Note the sudden extrametric stress on час in the third line, first syllable. This prolongs the third line and makes it depart from the regular three-ict stresses of the iambic tetrameter in lines 1 and 2: для берегов отчизны дальной is - - / - ´/ - ´/ - ´/ - but the third line is ´- / - ´/ - [] ´/ - ´/ - .
The speaker tries to hold on to her and not let her go, to prolong their farewell kiss. O moment, stay!
Но ты от горького лобзанья
Свои уста оторвала;
Из края мрачного изгнанья
Ты в край иной меня звала.
But you pulled away your lips / from this bitter kiss;
From the gloomy land of exile / you called me to another land.
She is calling him to visit her in her own land, leaving the exile where he, Pushkin, finds himself, exiled from Petersburg and now also from her love.
Ты говорила: "В день свиданья
Под небом вечно голубым,
В тени олив, любви лобзанья
Мы вновь, мой друг, соединим
You said: “When we meet again / Under a sky eternally blue
In the shade of olive trees, we will again, my friend, unite our kisses of love.”
Но там, увы, где неба своды
Сияют в блеске голубом,
Где тень олив легла на воды,
Заснула ты последним сном.
But there, alas, where the arches of heaven / shine in a light-blue glimmer,
Where the shade of the olives lay upon the waters, / You slept your final sleep.
So she has died. An old story, told over again and again in the annals of love. But here comes the burst of feeling which makes this story unique and personal, with the stamp of Pushkin alone.
Твоя краса, твои страданья
Исчезли в урне гробовой -
А с ними поцелуй свиданья...
Но жду его; он за тобой...
Your beauty, your sufferings / Vanished in the sepulchral urn,
And with them, the kiss of greeting;
But I wait for it; you owe it me.
First note that the Slavonic лобзание ‘kiss’, has been replaced by an ordinary everyday Russian поцелуй, which is of course the normal word today. “I am waiting for it (поцелуй);” it is on your account, you promised it to me and you must give it.
The last line, where all the feeling rushes to the surface, is the most ordinary in its vocabulary. Note за with the instrumental here (see previous blog); it stands behind you, you are responsible for it, you answer for it, you ‘have’ it in your control.
gmc
Friday, April 23, 2010
Pasteurization
April 23, 2010
Homogenizing and Pasteurizing of Good Things
Dear Students
...ruins them. MLB (“Major League Baseball, the corporation) has taken over the websites of all the minor league teams, not to speak of the majors. They are all the same, with corporation-appointed scribes and a corporation-appointed ticket vendor, the infamous Ticket Masters.
I may no longer telepone the Zephyrs box office. The number has been suppressed. There is a rambling and remonstrative description of the office hours, rules and regulations, but no number. If you called the Zephyrs they might actually know you. That’s prohibited.
I used to telephone and order my seat on the phone. I could pick the precise location, within limits of availability. I knew the section, the row, the seat I wanted. I knew the ladies who work there, by name, and they me.
No more. Ticket Master won’t let you choose the section number; they do that. You get to vaguely choose “left field,” “third base”. Ordering through Ticket Master is like ordering anything through a big corporation online. Only worse.
It is predictable. The bigger the corporation, the worse the site. Did you ever try ATT? Try clicking the button “Automatic monthly bill payment”. You know what it will do? Destroy your ability to ever pay your bill except by snail mail. Sites of swank elite products are just as bad, only worse. They are so insensitively and 'elegantly' designed that old eyes like mine cannot read their mauve and washed font colors. Try Montblanc. You’ll see.
With Ticket Master you have to create a special “Secure code”, not to confuse with “security code,” the infamous three-digit number on the back of your credit card. The notion of the secure code is a good one; it protects the consumer, or at least provides another putative, thin layer of protection. The problem is it is stupidly named and stupidly designed. Stupid and stupefying.
And another thing: it asks your for your card’s PIN, (or rather, in crass ignorance, ‘PIN number’).
Is this impudent gall or stupidity, or both?
I lucked out this time. The woman who processed my order, a real woman with blood in her veins and a brain in her head, recognized me by my pasteurized order, somehow, and gave me what she knew I would like. She also handed me my ticket at Will Call. “Here you are, Mr. George.”
This doesn’t happen in MLB.
gmc
Homogenizing and Pasteurizing of Good Things
Dear Students
...ruins them. MLB (“Major League Baseball, the corporation) has taken over the websites of all the minor league teams, not to speak of the majors. They are all the same, with corporation-appointed scribes and a corporation-appointed ticket vendor, the infamous Ticket Masters.
I may no longer telepone the Zephyrs box office. The number has been suppressed. There is a rambling and remonstrative description of the office hours, rules and regulations, but no number. If you called the Zephyrs they might actually know you. That’s prohibited.
I used to telephone and order my seat on the phone. I could pick the precise location, within limits of availability. I knew the section, the row, the seat I wanted. I knew the ladies who work there, by name, and they me.
No more. Ticket Master won’t let you choose the section number; they do that. You get to vaguely choose “left field,” “third base”. Ordering through Ticket Master is like ordering anything through a big corporation online. Only worse.
It is predictable. The bigger the corporation, the worse the site. Did you ever try ATT? Try clicking the button “Automatic monthly bill payment”. You know what it will do? Destroy your ability to ever pay your bill except by snail mail. Sites of swank elite products are just as bad, only worse. They are so insensitively and 'elegantly' designed that old eyes like mine cannot read their mauve and washed font colors. Try Montblanc. You’ll see.
With Ticket Master you have to create a special “Secure code”, not to confuse with “security code,” the infamous three-digit number on the back of your credit card. The notion of the secure code is a good one; it protects the consumer, or at least provides another putative, thin layer of protection. The problem is it is stupidly named and stupidly designed. Stupid and stupefying.
And another thing: it asks your for your card’s PIN, (or rather, in crass ignorance, ‘PIN number’).
Is this impudent gall or stupidity, or both?
I lucked out this time. The woman who processed my order, a real woman with blood in her veins and a brain in her head, recognized me by my pasteurized order, somehow, and gave me what she knew I would like. She also handed me my ticket at Will Call. “Here you are, Mr. George.”
This doesn’t happen in MLB.
gmc
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
What Is a University?
What is a university?
A university is a free association of scholars. Freedom is their attribute, freedom to choose their objects of scrutiny, freedom to imagine, freedom to write, freedom to teach, to travel, to think, to speak and to be silent.
Nowadays a university needs a manager, a development office, and a press. It needs a corporation in all the good and evil ways. So Tulane has Scott Cowen, who, judging by his Friday talks, loves Tulane with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his mind. And there is nothing bad in Tulane. Scott is the bearer of the gospel, the good news, good news only.
This is the prototype of university presidents today. It wasn’t that way in the recent past. University presidents were members of the association of scholars, like President Eliot of Harvard (way back), or President Pusey. When the students mutinied and staged sit-ins in the sixties, president Pusey asked himself, what would Thucydides do? When Senator Joseph McCarthy threatened civil liberties in the fifties, President Pusey knew what to do; he condemned him.
Those were the days of heroes in academia. Today, the scholars are trapped in the tight nets of institutional and bureaucratic controls. It is the parents and the students whose suasion counts for most these days, and so we have degrees in hotel and casino management in the School of Continuing Studies. Scholars rue the loss of the disciplines of logic, geometry, rhetoric, language, history. We have to put up with all this to get anything at all worth while done.
Now it’s the case that the bureaucracy can force nothing on the university that the faculty does not want to shape, control and govern, the faculty itself. If the bureaucracy gets too intolerable, the faculty will leave. If the bureaucracy tries to run something itself, the university suffers.
A small case in point which I will not discuss at great length is SACS, the association of Southern schools and colleges which accredits our university. To achieve and maintain accreditation we have to assess our programs and our faculties, and we must do it ourselves. All well and good. Is there anything wrong in this? Not at all.
But the mechanisms of assessment are given from above, or from without, far without, to the faculty, effectively vitiating their creative will to do this assessment. As a result SACS has a terrible reputation and the work of self-assessment is regarded, far and wide, with ridicule and repugnance. Naturally no scholar wants to ‘do’ this, or ‘be responsible for’ the work in her program or department. So the work goes to new contingent, non-research faculty, such as professors of the practice, or others who agree to ‘do’ it in return release from other duties. I was given the job for German and Russian, as I am retiring this year. All scholars want to focus on their research, and I’ll have plenty of time for that in short order. Do you think this bodes well for SACS?
Well, I do this of my own free will. I enjoy writing, and this is a remarkable challenge. My ‘boss’ is an intelligent person with a very sharp eye and nose. It’s not too bad; I’ve done worse. I won’t describe all this to you except to say it could be worse. My boss could be a fool. Or worse. It could be, well, a contemporary university president.
There aren’t any Puseys left, or many of them. (Actually I like the present prexy, Drew Faust.)
Now, a certain big bureaucrat at Tulane has been criticizing departments for “cobbling together” data instead of really and truly assessing and really and truly planning necessary changes in curriculum. Doesn’t this sound like corporation-speak? That’s what you get when faculty don’t want to do something and are told how to do it. Well, we are going to have to put up with a lot of things to have the privilege of a great, or at least a good, university.
Dear students, don’t let anyone know about this blog. Especially not your parents. Я имею право иметь свои секреты.
gmc
A university is a free association of scholars. Freedom is their attribute, freedom to choose their objects of scrutiny, freedom to imagine, freedom to write, freedom to teach, to travel, to think, to speak and to be silent.
Nowadays a university needs a manager, a development office, and a press. It needs a corporation in all the good and evil ways. So Tulane has Scott Cowen, who, judging by his Friday talks, loves Tulane with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his mind. And there is nothing bad in Tulane. Scott is the bearer of the gospel, the good news, good news only.
This is the prototype of university presidents today. It wasn’t that way in the recent past. University presidents were members of the association of scholars, like President Eliot of Harvard (way back), or President Pusey. When the students mutinied and staged sit-ins in the sixties, president Pusey asked himself, what would Thucydides do? When Senator Joseph McCarthy threatened civil liberties in the fifties, President Pusey knew what to do; he condemned him.
Those were the days of heroes in academia. Today, the scholars are trapped in the tight nets of institutional and bureaucratic controls. It is the parents and the students whose suasion counts for most these days, and so we have degrees in hotel and casino management in the School of Continuing Studies. Scholars rue the loss of the disciplines of logic, geometry, rhetoric, language, history. We have to put up with all this to get anything at all worth while done.
Now it’s the case that the bureaucracy can force nothing on the university that the faculty does not want to shape, control and govern, the faculty itself. If the bureaucracy gets too intolerable, the faculty will leave. If the bureaucracy tries to run something itself, the university suffers.
A small case in point which I will not discuss at great length is SACS, the association of Southern schools and colleges which accredits our university. To achieve and maintain accreditation we have to assess our programs and our faculties, and we must do it ourselves. All well and good. Is there anything wrong in this? Not at all.
But the mechanisms of assessment are given from above, or from without, far without, to the faculty, effectively vitiating their creative will to do this assessment. As a result SACS has a terrible reputation and the work of self-assessment is regarded, far and wide, with ridicule and repugnance. Naturally no scholar wants to ‘do’ this, or ‘be responsible for’ the work in her program or department. So the work goes to new contingent, non-research faculty, such as professors of the practice, or others who agree to ‘do’ it in return release from other duties. I was given the job for German and Russian, as I am retiring this year. All scholars want to focus on their research, and I’ll have plenty of time for that in short order. Do you think this bodes well for SACS?
Well, I do this of my own free will. I enjoy writing, and this is a remarkable challenge. My ‘boss’ is an intelligent person with a very sharp eye and nose. It’s not too bad; I’ve done worse. I won’t describe all this to you except to say it could be worse. My boss could be a fool. Or worse. It could be, well, a contemporary university president.
There aren’t any Puseys left, or many of them. (Actually I like the present prexy, Drew Faust.)
Now, a certain big bureaucrat at Tulane has been criticizing departments for “cobbling together” data instead of really and truly assessing and really and truly planning necessary changes in curriculum. Doesn’t this sound like corporation-speak? That’s what you get when faculty don’t want to do something and are told how to do it. Well, we are going to have to put up with a lot of things to have the privilege of a great, or at least a good, university.
Dear students, don’t let anyone know about this blog. Especially not your parents. Я имею право иметь свои секреты.
gmc
Sunday, April 18, 2010
По
April 18, 2010
По
Тhis preposition/prefix shows a very wide and diffuse range of meanings, so much so that it’s difficult to generalize. This sort of phenomenon is common in prepositions, classifiers, case markers, and the like in all natural languages. English for causes all sorts of problems for L2 learners, and for us when we try to ‘translate’ it into Russian. ‘For you’ can be для вас or вам. Деньги на поезду is ‘money for the trip’; elsewhere ‘for’ may be за.
По with the dative seems to mean ‘about the surface of a plane, covering a set of points on a plane’. E.g. ходить по магазинам ‘to go around to stores (one after another)’, муха xoдит по стакану ‘the fly is walking along the glass’ (Nabokov says: мухи не ползают, они ходят и потирают ручки ‘flies don’t crawl, they walk and rub their little hands’ , я ездил по всей России ‘I travelled all over Russia’.
Extended, non-spatial meanings are very interesting. Some point to cause or motive: я женился по любви ‘I married for love’, я это сказал по ошибке ‘I said that by mistake’, по этой причине ‘for this reason’, поэтому ‘therefore’. Others point to a connection between entities: брат по матери ‘half–brother (with the same mother)’, я чистый американец по происхождению, а чех по характеру ‘I am a pure-blooded American by provenance and a Czech by character’. старик по имени Джонс ‘аn old man named Jones’, что вы скажете по этому вопросу? ‘what can you say on this matter?’ See Townsend, Continuing, Lesson V.
По with accusative has the meaning ‘up to (in a series) and including’, e.g. задания с 12–ого апреля по 20–ое апреля ‘assignments from the 12th to the 20th of April’.
The preposition can also be used distributively, meaning that each member of a class of entities is treated in a certain way: дети получают по книге ‘the children receive a book each’. With numerals the accusative may appear: рабочим заплатили по тысячу долларов ‘they paid the workers 1 000 dollars each’.
As a prefix with determinate motion verbs (идти, ехать) по denotes the beginning of a trip or, by extension, the completed trip itself (perfective): он пошел домой ‘he set off for home’ or ‘he went home’, куда вы поедете ‘where will you go? With non-determinate verbs (ходить, ездить), and with a range of imperfectives signifying a non-telic activity, however, the prefix denotes an activity that is extended in time, usually for a short period, but possibly for an immeasurably long period. The greatest literary example is Anna’s exclamation in “The Lady with the Little Dog,” when she confesses to Gurov: “пожить хочу, пожить!” ‘I want to live (for a while), I want to live!’ Mundane examples: давайте почитаем ‘let’s read for a while’, я хочу поспать поcле обеда ‘I want to nap a bit after dinner’, папа походил взад и вперед по комнате ‘father walked up and down the room for a while’, давайте поговорим ‘let’s have a chat’.
This prefix also perfectivizes a number of verbs without adding any extra semantic information: познакомиться ‘get acquainted’, and many others.
For this reason a student of mine who knew Russian, when learning the Czech verb dělat ‘to make, do’, guessed that the perfective (in Russian, сделать), might be with po-. After all, in Russian one may say ничего не поделаешь ‘there is nothing to be done about it’. So my student began conjugating, in Czech class: “podělám, poděláš, podělá...” No, no, no, no, said the teacher. This means, believe it or not ‘I will foul my pants by releasing my bowels’. I swear to you this is the truth. An ironic rejoinder in Czech is the sarcastic “mám se podělat?” , ‘well, do I have to shit in my pants?’
Just goes to show you how you can never predict what a prefixation will mean. You can never ‘make up’ a new verb until you’ve actually heard it.
Only in Slavic. Only at Tulane.
gmc
По
Тhis preposition/prefix shows a very wide and diffuse range of meanings, so much so that it’s difficult to generalize. This sort of phenomenon is common in prepositions, classifiers, case markers, and the like in all natural languages. English for causes all sorts of problems for L2 learners, and for us when we try to ‘translate’ it into Russian. ‘For you’ can be для вас or вам. Деньги на поезду is ‘money for the trip’; elsewhere ‘for’ may be за.
По with the dative seems to mean ‘about the surface of a plane, covering a set of points on a plane’. E.g. ходить по магазинам ‘to go around to stores (one after another)’, муха xoдит по стакану ‘the fly is walking along the glass’ (Nabokov says: мухи не ползают, они ходят и потирают ручки ‘flies don’t crawl, they walk and rub their little hands’ , я ездил по всей России ‘I travelled all over Russia’.
Extended, non-spatial meanings are very interesting. Some point to cause or motive: я женился по любви ‘I married for love’, я это сказал по ошибке ‘I said that by mistake’, по этой причине ‘for this reason’, поэтому ‘therefore’. Others point to a connection between entities: брат по матери ‘half–brother (with the same mother)’, я чистый американец по происхождению, а чех по характеру ‘I am a pure-blooded American by provenance and a Czech by character’. старик по имени Джонс ‘аn old man named Jones’, что вы скажете по этому вопросу? ‘what can you say on this matter?’ See Townsend, Continuing, Lesson V.
По with accusative has the meaning ‘up to (in a series) and including’, e.g. задания с 12–ого апреля по 20–ое апреля ‘assignments from the 12th to the 20th of April’.
The preposition can also be used distributively, meaning that each member of a class of entities is treated in a certain way: дети получают по книге ‘the children receive a book each’. With numerals the accusative may appear: рабочим заплатили по тысячу долларов ‘they paid the workers 1 000 dollars each’.
As a prefix with determinate motion verbs (идти, ехать) по denotes the beginning of a trip or, by extension, the completed trip itself (perfective): он пошел домой ‘he set off for home’ or ‘he went home’, куда вы поедете ‘where will you go? With non-determinate verbs (ходить, ездить), and with a range of imperfectives signifying a non-telic activity, however, the prefix denotes an activity that is extended in time, usually for a short period, but possibly for an immeasurably long period. The greatest literary example is Anna’s exclamation in “The Lady with the Little Dog,” when she confesses to Gurov: “пожить хочу, пожить!” ‘I want to live (for a while), I want to live!’ Mundane examples: давайте почитаем ‘let’s read for a while’, я хочу поспать поcле обеда ‘I want to nap a bit after dinner’, папа походил взад и вперед по комнате ‘father walked up and down the room for a while’, давайте поговорим ‘let’s have a chat’.
This prefix also perfectivizes a number of verbs without adding any extra semantic information: познакомиться ‘get acquainted’, and many others.
For this reason a student of mine who knew Russian, when learning the Czech verb dělat ‘to make, do’, guessed that the perfective (in Russian, сделать), might be with po-. After all, in Russian one may say ничего не поделаешь ‘there is nothing to be done about it’. So my student began conjugating, in Czech class: “podělám, poděláš, podělá...” No, no, no, no, said the teacher. This means, believe it or not ‘I will foul my pants by releasing my bowels’. I swear to you this is the truth. An ironic rejoinder in Czech is the sarcastic “mám se podělat?” , ‘well, do I have to shit in my pants?’
Just goes to show you how you can never predict what a prefixation will mean. You can never ‘make up’ a new verb until you’ve actually heard it.
Only in Slavic. Only at Tulane.
gmc
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
За
April 14, 2010
За
Оne of my favorite prepositions and verbal prefixes is за. The following remarks owe much to Laura Janda’s book on the subject.
Janda talks of landmarks and groundings with this complex preposition. If you say ‘the park is behind the bank’, парк за банком, you mean that either from your viewing perspective or, perhaps from the anatomical structure of the street, the bank stands in the foreground and the park, possibly not visible, is in the background, more or less in the line of sight of the viewer.
Like под ‘under’, над ‘above’, перед ‘in front of’, за shares these complex points-of-view and multiple landmarks. It is not without reason that they all are grouped with the instrumental when location is meant. To varying degrees all of these can also occur with the accusative if motion is denoted: ‘I am walking behind the bank’, иду за банк.
The derived or figurative notions of these prepositions project their spatial bases into the dimensions of time, purpose, strategy, willed action, and so on.
One of my favorite words is the adverb зачем, ‘for what purpose, with what goal in mind?’ ~ почему ‘for what reason, by what cause?’ The latter is commoner, but the former is very cool. Зачем ты пришел сюда? For what purpose have you come here?
За takes the instrumental when the notion of ‘fetching, going to get’ is meant. Идите за хлебом, за водкой. Молодой студент пошел за дворником ‘Go for bread, for vodka. The young student went for the porter’. The word may mean ‘is on the account of, is the obligation or responsibility of’. Слово за вами ‘you have the floor (may speak)’. За Достоевским было записано творческое банкротство ‘Dostoevsky was said to have reached creative bankrupcy’. (!)
Remember the great line in Pushkin to his dead mistress who had promised him a last kiss: “Жду его, он за тобой,” ‘I am waiting for it; you owe it to me (it’s still on your account)’. This moves me to tears. It is gloriously beautiful grammar.
За takes the accusative in the sense ‘for’, as in спасибо за деньги ‘thanks for the money’, спасибо за ничего ‘thanks for nothing’, сколько вы хотите за этот стол ‘how much do you want for this desk’, за это расстреливают ‘they shoot people for this’.
As a prefix this morpheme signals place where and goal, often with the sense of going too far, of diverting oneself from one’s path or track, as in getting lost or overdoing something. Here are some of my favorites: я уже забегал вперед ‘I have jumped ahead of my theme’, я заблудился в темном лесу ‘I got lost in a deep forest, я зачитал эту книгу ‘I read this book to tatters’.
From C & P: Раскольников бы задавлен бедностью ‘Raskol’nikov was crushed by poverty’, до того Лизавета была запугана и забита, что даже не подняла руку ‘So frightened and cowed was Lizaveta that she didn’t even raise a hand (to defend herself)’.
Зачитать книгу also means ‘to borrow a book and never return it’. (!!) Note also зачитаться ‘o read oneself into a silly stupor’.
Only in Russian.
gmc
За
Оne of my favorite prepositions and verbal prefixes is за. The following remarks owe much to Laura Janda’s book on the subject.
Janda talks of landmarks and groundings with this complex preposition. If you say ‘the park is behind the bank’, парк за банком, you mean that either from your viewing perspective or, perhaps from the anatomical structure of the street, the bank stands in the foreground and the park, possibly not visible, is in the background, more or less in the line of sight of the viewer.
Like под ‘under’, над ‘above’, перед ‘in front of’, за shares these complex points-of-view and multiple landmarks. It is not without reason that they all are grouped with the instrumental when location is meant. To varying degrees all of these can also occur with the accusative if motion is denoted: ‘I am walking behind the bank’, иду за банк.
The derived or figurative notions of these prepositions project their spatial bases into the dimensions of time, purpose, strategy, willed action, and so on.
One of my favorite words is the adverb зачем, ‘for what purpose, with what goal in mind?’ ~ почему ‘for what reason, by what cause?’ The latter is commoner, but the former is very cool. Зачем ты пришел сюда? For what purpose have you come here?
За takes the instrumental when the notion of ‘fetching, going to get’ is meant. Идите за хлебом, за водкой. Молодой студент пошел за дворником ‘Go for bread, for vodka. The young student went for the porter’. The word may mean ‘is on the account of, is the obligation or responsibility of’. Слово за вами ‘you have the floor (may speak)’. За Достоевским было записано творческое банкротство ‘Dostoevsky was said to have reached creative bankrupcy’. (!)
Remember the great line in Pushkin to his dead mistress who had promised him a last kiss: “Жду его, он за тобой,” ‘I am waiting for it; you owe it to me (it’s still on your account)’. This moves me to tears. It is gloriously beautiful grammar.
За takes the accusative in the sense ‘for’, as in спасибо за деньги ‘thanks for the money’, спасибо за ничего ‘thanks for nothing’, сколько вы хотите за этот стол ‘how much do you want for this desk’, за это расстреливают ‘they shoot people for this’.
As a prefix this morpheme signals place where and goal, often with the sense of going too far, of diverting oneself from one’s path or track, as in getting lost or overdoing something. Here are some of my favorites: я уже забегал вперед ‘I have jumped ahead of my theme’, я заблудился в темном лесу ‘I got lost in a deep forest, я зачитал эту книгу ‘I read this book to tatters’.
From C & P: Раскольников бы задавлен бедностью ‘Raskol’nikov was crushed by poverty’, до того Лизавета была запугана и забита, что даже не подняла руку ‘So frightened and cowed was Lizaveta that she didn’t even raise a hand (to defend herself)’.
Зачитать книгу also means ‘to borrow a book and never return it’. (!!) Note also зачитаться ‘o read oneself into a silly stupor’.
Only in Russian.
gmc
Monday, April 12, 2010
Моre Reflexives
Моre Reflexives
April 12, 2010
I have gone back to Townsend for some examples of reflexives with ‘certain’ prefixes. Among my favorites: я хорошо выспалась/-ся ‘I have gotten a good night’s sleep (slept myself out)’, я вам звонил, звонил, но не дозвонился ‘I called and called you, but couldn’t get you’, договорились ‘we’ve agreed (it’s settled, it’s a date)’! Катя заучилась ‘Katya has studied herself into a stupor’, Байрон исписался ‘Byron has written himself into exhaustion’, Саша и Маша затанцевались ‘Sasha and Masha have danced to utter exhaustion’, мои родители разошлись ‘my parents have separated’.
Here’s a funny sentence from that same Lesson X, Continuing with Russian: Oсторожно, князь! Обопритесь на мою руку ‘Careful, prince! Lean on my arm’. This reflexive verb is опереться, опираться ‘lean (self) on (someone or something)’.
The prefix o- becomes обо– before a root that contains a cluster, but has a mobile vowel or other full vowel in the following syllable in other forms, so it goes: обопрусь, обопрёшься, обопрётся, past tense опёрся, оперлАсь. I call this the ‘paranoic oбo-‘ because it may be seen in обо мне, они говорят обо мне ‘they are talking about me’, where the old soft jer has dropped out of the root in the dative case of the pronoun.
Another verb with this is обобрать, обобрал, обобрали, оберу оберёшь ‘to fleece, rob someone’. Here the longer prefix is seen in the infinitive stem, where there used to be a jer in the root; in the present perfective, the shorter form occurs since there is a full vowel in the root.
gmc
April 12, 2010
I have gone back to Townsend for some examples of reflexives with ‘certain’ prefixes. Among my favorites: я хорошо выспалась/-ся ‘I have gotten a good night’s sleep (slept myself out)’, я вам звонил, звонил, но не дозвонился ‘I called and called you, but couldn’t get you’, договорились ‘we’ve agreed (it’s settled, it’s a date)’! Катя заучилась ‘Katya has studied herself into a stupor’, Байрон исписался ‘Byron has written himself into exhaustion’, Саша и Маша затанцевались ‘Sasha and Masha have danced to utter exhaustion’, мои родители разошлись ‘my parents have separated’.
Here’s a funny sentence from that same Lesson X, Continuing with Russian: Oсторожно, князь! Обопритесь на мою руку ‘Careful, prince! Lean on my arm’. This reflexive verb is опереться, опираться ‘lean (self) on (someone or something)’.
The prefix o- becomes обо– before a root that contains a cluster, but has a mobile vowel or other full vowel in the following syllable in other forms, so it goes: обопрусь, обопрёшься, обопрётся, past tense опёрся, оперлАсь. I call this the ‘paranoic oбo-‘ because it may be seen in обо мне, они говорят обо мне ‘they are talking about me’, where the old soft jer has dropped out of the root in the dative case of the pronoun.
Another verb with this is обобрать, обобрал, обобрали, оберу оберёшь ‘to fleece, rob someone’. Here the longer prefix is seen in the infinitive stem, where there used to be a jer in the root; in the present perfective, the shorter form occurs since there is a full vowel in the root.
gmc
See Raskol'nikov Hear
More on Hearing
The impersonal in Russian, as you know, is very effectively used to show that the source of the action/state lies outside the subject. Ему послышалось, что руки слабеют ‘he felt his arms numbing’ shows Raskol’nikov’s helplessness; он слышал, как руки слабеют ‘he felt his arms numbing’ has his much more of a participant, as it were, in the source of the action, with a nominative subject. Cf. the classic example он хочет поехать в Россию ‘he wants to go to Russia’ , and ему хочется в Россию ‘he feels like going to Russia/has the yen to go (no pun intended)’. The impersonal is very often negative: мне сегодня не работается ‘I just can’t work today’, мне здесь не спится ‘I (just) can’t sleep here’.
Raskol’nikov in his auditory adventures in I.7 often is the logical, dative subject of a reflexive verb, which is therefore not strictly speaking impersonal, but nonetheless R. is a sort of flabbergasted recipient of the sounds. Ему вдруг послышались тяжелые шаги ‘he suddenly heard heavy steps’, послышалась его одышка ‘he could hear (the man’s) asthmatic breathing’, послышался сильный шум ниже ‘he heard a loud noise below’. One exception to this sort of ‘middle voice’ in Russian (reflexive, but dative subject of the perceiver and a true nom. subject) is the truly impersonal phrase (147) послышалось, что ходят translated by Grace, Sasha and Katya, I believe, as something like ‘there was a sound that someone was walking’, which is quite correct; this awkward sentence probably wouldn’t go into a translation. The perceiver, Raskol’nikov, would be in the dative, but he is omitted. What does Connie Garnett say? I will check it later.
I, were I writing a translation of this, my favorite all-time book, might write ‘he heard the sound of footsteps in the next room’. It’s got to make your spine crawl along with Raskol’nikov. The verb is by default impersonal because the subordinate clause, containing the source of the action, is an indefinite personal in the third person, like здесь говорят по–русски ‘here Russian is spoken’. Even though there is an animate, indefinite, subject, послышалось has to be impersonal neuter.
O.K., I give up, I’ve got to find what Connie says. Why, here’s a handy Connie translation (one of many I must own): “Suddenly he heard steps in the room where the old woman lay.” I remember reading that at the age of eleven. (A la recherche du temps perdu.)
Remember the words of the sentimental Russian song, подмосковные вечера ‘Moscow Suburban Nights’: песня слышится...и не слышится... ‘you can hear a melody waft...and then it’s gone’.
This verb is like the Raskol’nikov’s auditory verbs: reflexive and dative, grammatical subject is the sound itself, песня.
Isn’t this pretty interesting?
gmc
The impersonal in Russian, as you know, is very effectively used to show that the source of the action/state lies outside the subject. Ему послышалось, что руки слабеют ‘he felt his arms numbing’ shows Raskol’nikov’s helplessness; он слышал, как руки слабеют ‘he felt his arms numbing’ has his much more of a participant, as it were, in the source of the action, with a nominative subject. Cf. the classic example он хочет поехать в Россию ‘he wants to go to Russia’ , and ему хочется в Россию ‘he feels like going to Russia/has the yen to go (no pun intended)’. The impersonal is very often negative: мне сегодня не работается ‘I just can’t work today’, мне здесь не спится ‘I (just) can’t sleep here’.
Raskol’nikov in his auditory adventures in I.7 often is the logical, dative subject of a reflexive verb, which is therefore not strictly speaking impersonal, but nonetheless R. is a sort of flabbergasted recipient of the sounds. Ему вдруг послышались тяжелые шаги ‘he suddenly heard heavy steps’, послышалась его одышка ‘he could hear (the man’s) asthmatic breathing’, послышался сильный шум ниже ‘he heard a loud noise below’. One exception to this sort of ‘middle voice’ in Russian (reflexive, but dative subject of the perceiver and a true nom. subject) is the truly impersonal phrase (147) послышалось, что ходят translated by Grace, Sasha and Katya, I believe, as something like ‘there was a sound that someone was walking’, which is quite correct; this awkward sentence probably wouldn’t go into a translation. The perceiver, Raskol’nikov, would be in the dative, but he is omitted. What does Connie Garnett say? I will check it later.
I, were I writing a translation of this, my favorite all-time book, might write ‘he heard the sound of footsteps in the next room’. It’s got to make your spine crawl along with Raskol’nikov. The verb is by default impersonal because the subordinate clause, containing the source of the action, is an indefinite personal in the third person, like здесь говорят по–русски ‘here Russian is spoken’. Even though there is an animate, indefinite, subject, послышалось has to be impersonal neuter.
O.K., I give up, I’ve got to find what Connie says. Why, here’s a handy Connie translation (one of many I must own): “Suddenly he heard steps in the room where the old woman lay.” I remember reading that at the age of eleven. (A la recherche du temps perdu.)
Remember the words of the sentimental Russian song, подмосковные вечера ‘Moscow Suburban Nights’: песня слышится...и не слышится... ‘you can hear a melody waft...and then it’s gone’.
This verb is like the Raskol’nikov’s auditory verbs: reflexive and dative, grammatical subject is the sound itself, песня.
Isn’t this pretty interesting?
gmc
Friday, April 9, 2010
See Raskol'nikov
April 9, 2010
Dear Students,
The ordinary-seeming verb видеть, вижу, видишь ‘to see’ in Russian is one of the first second-conjugation prototypes we learn, along with (по)смотреть ‘look at’; a verb of psychological visual perception and of conscious attention, cf. слушать, слушаю ‘listen to’, слышать, слышу ‘hear’. For some reason ‘hear’ is learned later — it’s trickier to conjugate and its easily confused with its counterpart. But видеть has always struck me as peculiar, as its infinitive theme in -e- (the old jat’ here) is never stressed, so that we don’t have any proof that the theme vowel isn’ t и. Я вас видил на улице would be the same as я вас видел. And yet I never encounter this spelling mistake. Strange.
This verb in Old Russian has the athematic present passive partiple невидомъ ‘being seen; having sight’, which should be невидим, as it is in modern Russian. Czech also has nevidomý ‘unsighted, blind’, hinting that this verb goes back to earlier Slavic. The imperative in Old Russian is вижь, ОCS виждь, ‘see!’ This is also irregularly athematic. As in “see the ball, see Jane run!” We don’t ordinarily speak that way. I think of Pushkin’s Slavonic poem “The Prophet”, with its line восстань, пророк, и виждь, и внемли....глаголом жги сердца людей! ‘Rise up, prophet, and see, and hear....sear the hearts of people with the Word’. I think of Pasternak’s translation of Hamlet’s ghost, ‘List, list, o list!’ as, literally Слышь, слышь, о слышь! (For some reason this sounds funny in Russian to me.) The imperative вижь is another signal that this is an old athematic verb.
And, indeed, it turns out to be related to the old verb ‘to know’ in Slavic, вэдэти, вэмь, in Roman letters věděti, věm. Indeed, the OCS form vědě ‘I know’ is the perfect tense of an older form of the word ‘to see’, so that ‘knowing’ is ‘having seen’. Veni, vidi, vici, I came, I saw, therefore I know; I conquered. Though we have lost the old verb вэдэти in Russian, we have a lot of cognates in the language: весть ‘news’, пропал без вести ‘disappeared without a trace’, известия ‘news’, известный ‘known, familiar’, неизвестный ‘unknown’.
It is interesting that the psychological perception verb слышать is used in Russian, and in many Slavic languages, in the sense ‘to feel, have the sensation’. When Raskol’nikov is about to murder the old woman, ему самому слышалось, как они с каждым мгновением (руки) немели и деревенели ‘he could feel how with each moment his arms were getting numb and wooden-feeling’ (page 140 in my edition). In this fashion auditory and generally psychological perception are intertwined in the mind of the murderer. who is on the verge of hallucination at the very moment when, his theory predicts, he should be totally clear-minded and emotionless.
gmc
Dear Students,
The ordinary-seeming verb видеть, вижу, видишь ‘to see’ in Russian is one of the first second-conjugation prototypes we learn, along with (по)смотреть ‘look at’; a verb of psychological visual perception and of conscious attention, cf. слушать, слушаю ‘listen to’, слышать, слышу ‘hear’. For some reason ‘hear’ is learned later — it’s trickier to conjugate and its easily confused with its counterpart. But видеть has always struck me as peculiar, as its infinitive theme in -e- (the old jat’ here) is never stressed, so that we don’t have any proof that the theme vowel isn’ t и. Я вас видил на улице would be the same as я вас видел. And yet I never encounter this spelling mistake. Strange.
This verb in Old Russian has the athematic present passive partiple невидомъ ‘being seen; having sight’, which should be невидим, as it is in modern Russian. Czech also has nevidomý ‘unsighted, blind’, hinting that this verb goes back to earlier Slavic. The imperative in Old Russian is вижь, ОCS виждь, ‘see!’ This is also irregularly athematic. As in “see the ball, see Jane run!” We don’t ordinarily speak that way. I think of Pushkin’s Slavonic poem “The Prophet”, with its line восстань, пророк, и виждь, и внемли....глаголом жги сердца людей! ‘Rise up, prophet, and see, and hear....sear the hearts of people with the Word’. I think of Pasternak’s translation of Hamlet’s ghost, ‘List, list, o list!’ as, literally Слышь, слышь, о слышь! (For some reason this sounds funny in Russian to me.) The imperative вижь is another signal that this is an old athematic verb.
And, indeed, it turns out to be related to the old verb ‘to know’ in Slavic, вэдэти, вэмь, in Roman letters věděti, věm. Indeed, the OCS form vědě ‘I know’ is the perfect tense of an older form of the word ‘to see’, so that ‘knowing’ is ‘having seen’. Veni, vidi, vici, I came, I saw, therefore I know; I conquered. Though we have lost the old verb вэдэти in Russian, we have a lot of cognates in the language: весть ‘news’, пропал без вести ‘disappeared without a trace’, известия ‘news’, известный ‘known, familiar’, неизвестный ‘unknown’.
It is interesting that the psychological perception verb слышать is used in Russian, and in many Slavic languages, in the sense ‘to feel, have the sensation’. When Raskol’nikov is about to murder the old woman, ему самому слышалось, как они с каждым мгновением (руки) немели и деревенели ‘he could feel how with each moment his arms were getting numb and wooden-feeling’ (page 140 in my edition). In this fashion auditory and generally psychological perception are intertwined in the mind of the murderer. who is on the verge of hallucination at the very moment when, his theory predicts, he should be totally clear-minded and emotionless.
gmc
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Regressive Palatalization of Velars
April 7, 2010
So the Cubs lost their opener in humiliating fashion. What else is new?
I am thinking about the second regressive palatalization of velars in Slavic languages, the one responsible for all kinds of rough edges in the morphology of nouns and verbs that Russian outright got rid of. It is fascinating.
For example, remember the irregular plural of друг, друзья? Two things are irregular about it: it’s an old feminine collective formation in –й–а, and it has the velar shift of g to z (dz), not to zh. This sort of change used to be seen in all the Old Russian nominative plurals of masculines, e.g. чиновникъ ‘civil servant’ had the regular OR plural чиновници. Now, in West Slavic this became a big thing: the development of a new category of ‘virile’ nouns (!) marking masculine people. Macho thing. But the egalitarian Russians made the nominative plural the same as the old accusative plural, so столи ‘tables’ (nom.) became столы (nom. and acc.). Other Slavic languages followed suit. But Russian had its complications: the acc pl of all animates would merge not with the nominative but with the genitive, as we are about to learn now in 102. So while in Czech you have a special nom. pl and the acc. pl. merging with the instrumental pl, in Russian you have nom pl = acc pl if inanimate, and gen pl = acc pl if animate (women included).
Russ столы столы столов столами столах столам
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech stoly stoly stolů stoly stolech stolům
Russ братья братьев братьев братьями братьях братьям
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech chlapi chlapy chlapů chlapy chlapech chlapům
You can see how the Russian plural has gotten much more unified. The old ам, ами, ах, ям, ями ях fit almost all the nouns. Not so for Czech.
I also miss the good old second regressive in the imperatives of the verbs мочь, печь, речь — мози, мозэте, пьци, пьцэте, рьци, рьцэте (I use the э letter to represent the old jat’).
Here is a sentence from the 11th century Ostromirovo gospel:
молю же вьсэхь почитающихъ не мозэте кляти, нъ исправлшье, почитаите. ‘I beg all who are reading this not to curse me, but, having corrected me, to read on’. Istn’t that something? I repeat the same for my readers.
gmc
So the Cubs lost their opener in humiliating fashion. What else is new?
I am thinking about the second regressive palatalization of velars in Slavic languages, the one responsible for all kinds of rough edges in the morphology of nouns and verbs that Russian outright got rid of. It is fascinating.
For example, remember the irregular plural of друг, друзья? Two things are irregular about it: it’s an old feminine collective formation in –й–а, and it has the velar shift of g to z (dz), not to zh. This sort of change used to be seen in all the Old Russian nominative plurals of masculines, e.g. чиновникъ ‘civil servant’ had the regular OR plural чиновници. Now, in West Slavic this became a big thing: the development of a new category of ‘virile’ nouns (!) marking masculine people. Macho thing. But the egalitarian Russians made the nominative plural the same as the old accusative plural, so столи ‘tables’ (nom.) became столы (nom. and acc.). Other Slavic languages followed suit. But Russian had its complications: the acc pl of all animates would merge not with the nominative but with the genitive, as we are about to learn now in 102. So while in Czech you have a special nom. pl and the acc. pl. merging with the instrumental pl, in Russian you have nom pl = acc pl if inanimate, and gen pl = acc pl if animate (women included).
Russ столы столы столов столами столах столам
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech stoly stoly stolů stoly stolech stolům
Russ братья братьев братьев братьями братьях братьям
nom acc gen instr loc dat
Czech chlapi chlapy chlapů chlapy chlapech chlapům
You can see how the Russian plural has gotten much more unified. The old ам, ами, ах, ям, ями ях fit almost all the nouns. Not so for Czech.
I also miss the good old second regressive in the imperatives of the verbs мочь, печь, речь — мози, мозэте, пьци, пьцэте, рьци, рьцэте (I use the э letter to represent the old jat’).
Here is a sentence from the 11th century Ostromirovo gospel:
молю же вьсэхь почитающихъ не мозэте кляти, нъ исправлшье, почитаите. ‘I beg all who are reading this not to curse me, but, having corrected me, to read on’. Istn’t that something? I repeat the same for my readers.
gmc
Friday, April 2, 2010
Why Time Begins on Opening Day
April 2, 2010
Dear Students,
Monday is opening day, which doesn't mean much to most of us any more, but to me, it is, as always, hope springing eternal in the human breast, or my aging version of my former youth. In 1945, when I was two, the Cubs won their last pennant, and I remember going to the Series in Wrigley Field and scoring the game in my crude toddler's scrawl. I kept the scorecard; Cubs lost. I cried all the way home (that part, I believe, is true).
But it's a new season, a new chance at life and victory. I get out my old glove and try to make my son play catch with me, but he doesn't like baseball. I am alone in my tragedy and my exaltation. So I throw the ball up into the air and catch it myself. That's the way it is.
gmc
Dear Students,
Monday is opening day, which doesn't mean much to most of us any more, but to me, it is, as always, hope springing eternal in the human breast, or my aging version of my former youth. In 1945, when I was two, the Cubs won their last pennant, and I remember going to the Series in Wrigley Field and scoring the game in my crude toddler's scrawl. I kept the scorecard; Cubs lost. I cried all the way home (that part, I believe, is true).
But it's a new season, a new chance at life and victory. I get out my old glove and try to make my son play catch with me, but he doesn't like baseball. I am alone in my tragedy and my exaltation. So I throw the ball up into the air and catch it myself. That's the way it is.
gmc
Finale: Passives and Reflexives
April 2, 2010
More on Passives and Reflexives
Dear Students,
this is a particularly fun blog. Read it carefully.
Russian has a quasi-free syntax, which allows it to highlight new information, or the rheme, in sentence-final. Cf. this exchange: — Кто говорит? — Говорит Сидиров. ‘Who is speaking? Sidorov is speaking.’ Word order can be used to make a kind of syntactic passive. Старуху процентщицу убил не крестьянин Николай, а студент Родион Романович Раскольников. ‘The old usurer woman was killed not by the peasant Nikolay, but by the student Rodion Romanovich Raskol’nikov. Literally: ‘the old woman (acc) - killed - not Nikolay - but R.’ This is a lot nicer, to my ear, than the use of a ppp, as in Старуха была убита не Николаем, а Раскольниковым, with the auxiliary, past passive participle, and agent in the instrumental. More examples: объявление повесила секретарша, ‘the flyers were posted by the secretary’, меня похвалил сам президент, ‘I was praised by the president himself’, эти сведения нам передали начальники ‘we were informed (dat.) of these matters (acc.) by the bosses themselves (nom.). Cf. the topicalizer ‘это’ in these examples: это Раскольников убивал, это я написал эту длинную статью, это папа вымыл машину, ‘it was R. who was the killer’, ‘it was I who wrote that long article’. ‘it was Father who washed the car’.
A few more important and interesting non-passive -ся constructions: note the word найтись ‘to turn up’, not ‘to be found’. Бумажник нашелся в комоде ‘the wallet turned up in the dresser drawer’.
I like the so-called ‘reflexive of general characteristic’. Remember when Gurov first meets the lady with the little dog, and he uses the dog to get to the lady? When he offers a bone and the dog growls, Gurov shakes his finger warningly at him. The lady tells him: он не кусается ‘he doesn’t bite’. Another good one in this class is ругать кого, ругаться, ругать себя. The transitive means ‘curse someone out’, the reflexive particle, ‘to swear (as a characteristic)’, and the reflexive pronoun себя, ‘to curse oneself out’.
Note дверь открылась, дверь быта открыта, дверь открыли, meaning, respectively, ‘the door opened’, ‘the door was open’, ‘the door was opened’. The first is not a passive, but a kind of middle voice, or unergative, construction; some force or agent or instrument caused the door to open — this is not a passive. The second is a ppp, typical of a passive sentence, but also very often simply adjectival: дверь открыта ‘the door has been opened/the door is open’. The third is the useful personal indefinite construction, with no overt subject, the object fronted, and the verb a transitive without a nominative subject ‘the door has been opened’. Cf. ‘the stew is cooking slowly on the stove’.
The verbs ‘open’ and ‘close’ are important. от– (за–)крЫть, закрЫла, закрЫли; закрОю, закрОешь, закрОют. Similarly: мыть мОю мОешь мОют, мыл, мЫла, мЫли. These are the perfectives; imperfectives are закрывать, открывать.
Дверь открыли is a kind of indefinite passive with an implied human agent. If you don’t want to imply a human agent, but some kind of indefinite instrument, you can use the default neuter subject, as in the stock example отца убило молнией ‘father was killed by lightning’. But I prefer the great example from the Brothers Karamazov, when stinking Lizaveta somehow climbs over the wall separating the garden from the bathhouse. The narrator tells us ее перенесло, или перенесли, ‘someone carried her over, or something did’. This is effected by the change of just one letter.
I told you literature does it so much better than stock examples. ‘Father was killed by lightning’, indeed — that’s in the category of ‘the boy was playing in the garden with his aunt and his governess’. Give me a break. Remember how Nabokov almost flunked his American citizenship reading test. He correctly read the sentence ‘the child is bold’, and then added mischievously, ‘if you change one letter you could get ‘the child is bald’. (This was in the days before chemotherapy for children, he meant no offense.)
gmc
More on Passives and Reflexives
Dear Students,
this is a particularly fun blog. Read it carefully.
Russian has a quasi-free syntax, which allows it to highlight new information, or the rheme, in sentence-final. Cf. this exchange: — Кто говорит? — Говорит Сидиров. ‘Who is speaking? Sidorov is speaking.’ Word order can be used to make a kind of syntactic passive. Старуху процентщицу убил не крестьянин Николай, а студент Родион Романович Раскольников. ‘The old usurer woman was killed not by the peasant Nikolay, but by the student Rodion Romanovich Raskol’nikov. Literally: ‘the old woman (acc) - killed - not Nikolay - but R.’ This is a lot nicer, to my ear, than the use of a ppp, as in Старуха была убита не Николаем, а Раскольниковым, with the auxiliary, past passive participle, and agent in the instrumental. More examples: объявление повесила секретарша, ‘the flyers were posted by the secretary’, меня похвалил сам президент, ‘I was praised by the president himself’, эти сведения нам передали начальники ‘we were informed (dat.) of these matters (acc.) by the bosses themselves (nom.). Cf. the topicalizer ‘это’ in these examples: это Раскольников убивал, это я написал эту длинную статью, это папа вымыл машину, ‘it was R. who was the killer’, ‘it was I who wrote that long article’. ‘it was Father who washed the car’.
A few more important and interesting non-passive -ся constructions: note the word найтись ‘to turn up’, not ‘to be found’. Бумажник нашелся в комоде ‘the wallet turned up in the dresser drawer’.
I like the so-called ‘reflexive of general characteristic’. Remember when Gurov first meets the lady with the little dog, and he uses the dog to get to the lady? When he offers a bone and the dog growls, Gurov shakes his finger warningly at him. The lady tells him: он не кусается ‘he doesn’t bite’. Another good one in this class is ругать кого, ругаться, ругать себя. The transitive means ‘curse someone out’, the reflexive particle, ‘to swear (as a characteristic)’, and the reflexive pronoun себя, ‘to curse oneself out’.
Note дверь открылась, дверь быта открыта, дверь открыли, meaning, respectively, ‘the door opened’, ‘the door was open’, ‘the door was opened’. The first is not a passive, but a kind of middle voice, or unergative, construction; some force or agent or instrument caused the door to open — this is not a passive. The second is a ppp, typical of a passive sentence, but also very often simply adjectival: дверь открыта ‘the door has been opened/the door is open’. The third is the useful personal indefinite construction, with no overt subject, the object fronted, and the verb a transitive without a nominative subject ‘the door has been opened’. Cf. ‘the stew is cooking slowly on the stove’.
The verbs ‘open’ and ‘close’ are important. от– (за–)крЫть, закрЫла, закрЫли; закрОю, закрОешь, закрОют. Similarly: мыть мОю мОешь мОют, мыл, мЫла, мЫли. These are the perfectives; imperfectives are закрывать, открывать.
Дверь открыли is a kind of indefinite passive with an implied human agent. If you don’t want to imply a human agent, but some kind of indefinite instrument, you can use the default neuter subject, as in the stock example отца убило молнией ‘father was killed by lightning’. But I prefer the great example from the Brothers Karamazov, when stinking Lizaveta somehow climbs over the wall separating the garden from the bathhouse. The narrator tells us ее перенесло, или перенесли, ‘someone carried her over, or something did’. This is effected by the change of just one letter.
I told you literature does it so much better than stock examples. ‘Father was killed by lightning’, indeed — that’s in the category of ‘the boy was playing in the garden with his aunt and his governess’. Give me a break. Remember how Nabokov almost flunked his American citizenship reading test. He correctly read the sentence ‘the child is bold’, and then added mischievously, ‘if you change one letter you could get ‘the child is bald’. (This was in the days before chemotherapy for children, he meant no offense.)
gmc
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thoughts on Reflexives and Passives
March 27, 2010
Thoughts on Reflexives and Passives
There is another reflexive in Russian, of course; it is the pronoun себя (gen.-acc), себе (dat.-prep.) собой (instr.); the nominative is lacking. This is the Slavic cognate of Latin sui (gen.), sibi (dat.) se(se) (acc.). This form is in complementary distribution with -ся — where the one occurs the other may not.
I do not understand all the reasons underlying the choice in Russian. We say я видел себя в зеркале, я люблю себя ‘I saw myself in the mirror, I love myself’; я *любился does not exist, as so linguists star it as impossible, but, я влюбился в Аню ‘I fell in love with Anya’ is a standard locution.
If we said я *виделся it would be unacceptable, but мы часто виделись ‘we often saw each other’ is very common, cf. мы встретились утром на улице ‘we met in the morning on the street’. This is the ‘reciprocal’ reflexive, when both agents combine in a single action, or two or more people join in producing a single action.
Переписываться ‘correspond’, is often sited as a reciprocal of actions going back and forth, action A producing re-action B as in a tennis game. My favorite formation of this sort is перестукиваться ‘communicate by knocking (on metal pipes, for example, in prison). This is quasi-productive and you can try to make up your own examples and see if they exist. Перемигиваться ‘to exchange winks’, перекашливаться ‘to exchange meaningful coughs’.I think this would be a good construction for many semiotic systems, say animal communication.
A very interesting verb is считать кого кем shorthand for ‘consider someone (acc) someone (instr.). This is a ‘small clause’ verb, or a verb with double complement, object accusative and comparative entity, instrumental. It can take an animate (human, personal) subject and passivizes in -ся, so that it is a glaring exception to the rule that passives with the particle have to be inanimate. Not only that: it can take the full reflexive pronoun, with the true reflexive meaning. What a dream come true. Here are examples:
(1а ) Профессор считает Mашу (acc) хорошей студенткой (a good student) ‘the professor considers Masha an excellent student’
(1б) Мы все считаем mашу хорошей студенткой ‘We all consider Masha a good student’
(1в) Mаша (всеми) считается хорошей студенткой ‘Masha is considered a good student by everyone’
(1г) Mаша считает себя очень хорошей студенткой ‘Masha considers herself a very good student’.
Example 1a and 1б are transitive, with instr. complement. Example 1в is passive, with the agent in the instrumental (всеми) and the complement in the instrumental. Note that the two instrumental phrases are separated so that they don’t get mixed up. 1г is the reflexive, with the full reflexive pronoun in the accusative, and ‘good student’ in the instrumental as complement.
Why, I ask you, can’t all the passives/reflexives in Russian be this straightforward? (Again, see Townsend, Chapter X.) But they are not. Townsend mentions some formations with -ся which might be confused by students as reflexives or passives: Иван убился means neither ‘Ivan killed himself’ nor ‘Ivan was killed’. but ‘Ivan got smashed up to death’. But повеситься, утопиться do have the reflexive meaning, ‘to hang oneself’ and ‘to drown oneself’. What can one do?
The lesson is that general rules must be built up slowly, with numerous lexical exceptions. Себя always has some sort of ‘self’ reference, that is, it is always reflexive, while –ся only has one meaning for absolute sure in all cases, the syntactic one that it can’t be transitive, it can’t take an accusative (but can denote various sorts of other things).
More later,
gmc
Thoughts on Reflexives and Passives
There is another reflexive in Russian, of course; it is the pronoun себя (gen.-acc), себе (dat.-prep.) собой (instr.); the nominative is lacking. This is the Slavic cognate of Latin sui (gen.), sibi (dat.) se(se) (acc.). This form is in complementary distribution with -ся — where the one occurs the other may not.
I do not understand all the reasons underlying the choice in Russian. We say я видел себя в зеркале, я люблю себя ‘I saw myself in the mirror, I love myself’; я *любился does not exist, as so linguists star it as impossible, but, я влюбился в Аню ‘I fell in love with Anya’ is a standard locution.
If we said я *виделся it would be unacceptable, but мы часто виделись ‘we often saw each other’ is very common, cf. мы встретились утром на улице ‘we met in the morning on the street’. This is the ‘reciprocal’ reflexive, when both agents combine in a single action, or two or more people join in producing a single action.
Переписываться ‘correspond’, is often sited as a reciprocal of actions going back and forth, action A producing re-action B as in a tennis game. My favorite formation of this sort is перестукиваться ‘communicate by knocking (on metal pipes, for example, in prison). This is quasi-productive and you can try to make up your own examples and see if they exist. Перемигиваться ‘to exchange winks’, перекашливаться ‘to exchange meaningful coughs’.I think this would be a good construction for many semiotic systems, say animal communication.
A very interesting verb is считать кого кем shorthand for ‘consider someone (acc) someone (instr.). This is a ‘small clause’ verb, or a verb with double complement, object accusative and comparative entity, instrumental. It can take an animate (human, personal) subject and passivizes in -ся, so that it is a glaring exception to the rule that passives with the particle have to be inanimate. Not only that: it can take the full reflexive pronoun, with the true reflexive meaning. What a dream come true. Here are examples:
(1а ) Профессор считает Mашу (acc) хорошей студенткой (a good student) ‘the professor considers Masha an excellent student’
(1б) Мы все считаем mашу хорошей студенткой ‘We all consider Masha a good student’
(1в) Mаша (всеми) считается хорошей студенткой ‘Masha is considered a good student by everyone’
(1г) Mаша считает себя очень хорошей студенткой ‘Masha considers herself a very good student’.
Example 1a and 1б are transitive, with instr. complement. Example 1в is passive, with the agent in the instrumental (всеми) and the complement in the instrumental. Note that the two instrumental phrases are separated so that they don’t get mixed up. 1г is the reflexive, with the full reflexive pronoun in the accusative, and ‘good student’ in the instrumental as complement.
Why, I ask you, can’t all the passives/reflexives in Russian be this straightforward? (Again, see Townsend, Chapter X.) But they are not. Townsend mentions some formations with -ся which might be confused by students as reflexives or passives: Иван убился means neither ‘Ivan killed himself’ nor ‘Ivan was killed’. but ‘Ivan got smashed up to death’. But повеситься, утопиться do have the reflexive meaning, ‘to hang oneself’ and ‘to drown oneself’. What can one do?
The lesson is that general rules must be built up slowly, with numerous lexical exceptions. Себя always has some sort of ‘self’ reference, that is, it is always reflexive, while –ся only has one meaning for absolute sure in all cases, the syntactic one that it can’t be transitive, it can’t take an accusative (but can denote various sorts of other things).
More later,
gmc
Friday, March 26, 2010
Reflexives and Passives
March 25, 2010
Reflexives, Leading into Passives
Marmeladov asks Raskolnikov, in the stinking bar at a sticky little table, “My dear sir, may I inquire, are you in the service (изволили служить) or are you a student (учитесь)?” — Учусь, the latter replies, using a verb well known to 102 students to mean “I am enrolled in a course of study, I study.” You also know that when the ‘reflexive particle’ is removed, the verb is transitive: (вы)учить слова, урок. But what does the particle -ся mean, and how is it reflexive? And how many verbs are like this, that they may be used with or without the reflexive particle?
In the strict sense phrases like ‘wash (oneself)’, ‘shave (oneself)’ ‘comb one’s hair’ — мыться, бриться, причесаться are reflexive as the action is directed by the subject to himself, and transitive when used with an accusative, as in мыть машину. (The reflexive is what Chomsky calls anaphora, one of the keys to a child’s setting of linguistic parameters, supposedly, as she learns that ‘Mary sees her in the mirror’ means not Mary, and ‘Mary sees herself in the mirror’ is no one but Mary. This has a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland flavor to it,) But verbs in -ся have a large semantic range, well beyond reflexivization. The only thing they all share has been said to be intransitivity, that is, none of them appear with an object in the accusative. So: ‘study the Russian language’ is учиться русскому языку, with the dative, ‘fear lions’, бояться львов, with the genitive. This is said to be so as the particle is a trace of an accusative meaning ‘self’, as in защититься от врага ‘to defend oneself from the enemy’. In some Slavic languages, such as Czech, reflexives that semantically ‘feel like’ transitives have developed accusatives, especially in the spoken language: učím se ruštinu ‘I am learning Russian’, with the reflexive se and the accusative (fem.) noun rustinu.
Is the particle ever part of a passive construction? Yes, indeed it is, but there are some important semantic and grammatical restrictions. First the subject may not be an animate, or especially a human animate being. Second, the verb must be imperfective.
So we do indeed have passives such as: Набоков говорил, что роман Дар писался во время войны “Nabokov said that the novel The Gift was written during the war.” This sentence is an elegant way of not mentioning himself, the agent. What if it were perfective, e.g., how would Nabokov say the the novel was completed (by him) during the war? Набоков говорил, что роман Дар был закончен/написан (им) во время войны. This structure can be unwieldy and about as elegant as ‘the ball was hit by Nabokov’. Russian can avoid these structures, those with a passive participle, an auxiliary, and an agent in the instrumental, by avoiding the perfective and describing the event as unfolding and imperfective.
With an inanimate subject and an imperfective predicate, we find lots of passives, such as дом строится нашей фирмой ‘the building is being constructed by our firm’.
A verb like возвращать(ся) ‘to return’ can be ‘go back’ when reflexive, and “take X (acc) back’ when not reflexive. We have: студенты возвращают книги в библиотеку ‘the students are returning the books to the library’, студенты возвращаются в библиотеку ‘the students are returning (i.e. going back) to the library’. We may think of the reflexive particle in the latter as bearing a reflexive, accusative meaning: ‘the students are returning-selves’.
What about книги возврaщаются в библиотеку? This can’t mean that the books are going back on their own steam; it must imply an agent. We could add студентами to this sentence and we would get a reasonably grammatical, although far-fetched sounding, sentence, meaning something ‘the books are being returned to the library by the students’. Passives like this, with the agent overtly supplied, always have struck me as awkward, just like ‘the book was completed by Nabokov during the war’. (See Townsend’s Continuing with Russian, Chapter X for his discussion.)
One linguist said that ‘Hubert loves God’ is good English, but ‘God is loved by Hubert’, the passive thereof, is fishy. Why do you think this is so? But it all depends. The past passive participle alone doesn’t sound awkard, and look what Majakovsky did with the form убит ‘killed’ — Убиты! / И все равно мне / он или я их / убил. ‘They have been killed/they are killed / and I don’t care / Whether it was he or I / who killed them.' Cf. also Lermontov’s great elegy on the death of Pushkin: Убит поэт, невольник чести ‘The poet has been killed, captive of his honor’. Look how the Russian ppp short form can contain an entire passive sentence within it: сказано, сделано ‘it is said, it is done’ (‘no sooner said than done’).
Turn to poetry to resolve and transcend the sophistries of grammar.
More on passives and reflexives will follow. This is a big subject that has always attracted the attention of Slavists.
gmc
Reflexives, Leading into Passives
Marmeladov asks Raskolnikov, in the stinking bar at a sticky little table, “My dear sir, may I inquire, are you in the service (изволили служить) or are you a student (учитесь)?” — Учусь, the latter replies, using a verb well known to 102 students to mean “I am enrolled in a course of study, I study.” You also know that when the ‘reflexive particle’ is removed, the verb is transitive: (вы)учить слова, урок. But what does the particle -ся mean, and how is it reflexive? And how many verbs are like this, that they may be used with or without the reflexive particle?
In the strict sense phrases like ‘wash (oneself)’, ‘shave (oneself)’ ‘comb one’s hair’ — мыться, бриться, причесаться are reflexive as the action is directed by the subject to himself, and transitive when used with an accusative, as in мыть машину. (The reflexive is what Chomsky calls anaphora, one of the keys to a child’s setting of linguistic parameters, supposedly, as she learns that ‘Mary sees her in the mirror’ means not Mary, and ‘Mary sees herself in the mirror’ is no one but Mary. This has a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland flavor to it,) But verbs in -ся have a large semantic range, well beyond reflexivization. The only thing they all share has been said to be intransitivity, that is, none of them appear with an object in the accusative. So: ‘study the Russian language’ is учиться русскому языку, with the dative, ‘fear lions’, бояться львов, with the genitive. This is said to be so as the particle is a trace of an accusative meaning ‘self’, as in защититься от врага ‘to defend oneself from the enemy’. In some Slavic languages, such as Czech, reflexives that semantically ‘feel like’ transitives have developed accusatives, especially in the spoken language: učím se ruštinu ‘I am learning Russian’, with the reflexive se and the accusative (fem.) noun rustinu.
Is the particle ever part of a passive construction? Yes, indeed it is, but there are some important semantic and grammatical restrictions. First the subject may not be an animate, or especially a human animate being. Second, the verb must be imperfective.
So we do indeed have passives such as: Набоков говорил, что роман Дар писался во время войны “Nabokov said that the novel The Gift was written during the war.” This sentence is an elegant way of not mentioning himself, the agent. What if it were perfective, e.g., how would Nabokov say the the novel was completed (by him) during the war? Набоков говорил, что роман Дар был закончен/написан (им) во время войны. This structure can be unwieldy and about as elegant as ‘the ball was hit by Nabokov’. Russian can avoid these structures, those with a passive participle, an auxiliary, and an agent in the instrumental, by avoiding the perfective and describing the event as unfolding and imperfective.
With an inanimate subject and an imperfective predicate, we find lots of passives, such as дом строится нашей фирмой ‘the building is being constructed by our firm’.
A verb like возвращать(ся) ‘to return’ can be ‘go back’ when reflexive, and “take X (acc) back’ when not reflexive. We have: студенты возвращают книги в библиотеку ‘the students are returning the books to the library’, студенты возвращаются в библиотеку ‘the students are returning (i.e. going back) to the library’. We may think of the reflexive particle in the latter as bearing a reflexive, accusative meaning: ‘the students are returning-selves’.
What about книги возврaщаются в библиотеку? This can’t mean that the books are going back on their own steam; it must imply an agent. We could add студентами to this sentence and we would get a reasonably grammatical, although far-fetched sounding, sentence, meaning something ‘the books are being returned to the library by the students’. Passives like this, with the agent overtly supplied, always have struck me as awkward, just like ‘the book was completed by Nabokov during the war’. (See Townsend’s Continuing with Russian, Chapter X for his discussion.)
One linguist said that ‘Hubert loves God’ is good English, but ‘God is loved by Hubert’, the passive thereof, is fishy. Why do you think this is so? But it all depends. The past passive participle alone doesn’t sound awkard, and look what Majakovsky did with the form убит ‘killed’ — Убиты! / И все равно мне / он или я их / убил. ‘They have been killed/they are killed / and I don’t care / Whether it was he or I / who killed them.' Cf. also Lermontov’s great elegy on the death of Pushkin: Убит поэт, невольник чести ‘The poet has been killed, captive of his honor’. Look how the Russian ppp short form can contain an entire passive sentence within it: сказано, сделано ‘it is said, it is done’ (‘no sooner said than done’).
Turn to poetry to resolve and transcend the sophistries of grammar.
More on passives and reflexives will follow. This is a big subject that has always attracted the attention of Slavists.
gmc
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Implosion of 204
The Implosion of 204
I’ve never had a course quite like this one. I haven’t given a single test or quiz the entire semester, and the students have had great difficulty, with but three semesters’ preparation, reading Преступление и наказание. And I have spent a lot of time preparing for class, much more than ever for an intermediate class. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong — I have read so deeply in Dostoevsky that... what?
I had great difficulty, too, when I read Пр. & н. for the first time, and in those days I didn’t have my edition lying around to help me. I say to you that any student in 204 willing to spend 2-3 hours of work each class period would be gaining a reading knowledge, with my aids, and, with active work on exercises and composition, she/he would be advancing her/his Russian superbly and they would feel good about it.
Especially valuable is the recorded text of the novel, which I have made available to everyone. I would be glad to give you individual help on taking apart the Dostoevsky text for grammatical purposes. We will try to do more of this in class.
You could make an exhaustive study of how participles and gerunds are used in literary narrative. For as long as you read Russian, you’re going to find them, and in my edition every last gerund and participle is translated and explained.
This, plus the inestimable intrinsic value, as they say, of the literature itself.
Many of you, or some, have worked, in spurts, like this, and done some excellent compositions with original ideas expressed cogently in Russian. And everyone has worked, at some time, or tried to, in good conscience. One or two people have taken the time to talk this over with me, which I appreciate. I know some of you, or many of you (многие из вас; this doesn’t mean absolutely many, but ‘many’ in the group of you) are disappointed to find that her Russian is not getting any better.
I feel like the Zen master who tells his apprenctices to sweep the floor and take out the garbage for a year, and come back in five years. I wonder, how does he feel, in fact?
I’m no Zen master, so I’ve no right to tell you to take out the garbage.
But it’s not over yet; maybe you will still learn some Russian!
gmc
I’ve never had a course quite like this one. I haven’t given a single test or quiz the entire semester, and the students have had great difficulty, with but three semesters’ preparation, reading Преступление и наказание. And I have spent a lot of time preparing for class, much more than ever for an intermediate class. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong — I have read so deeply in Dostoevsky that... what?
I had great difficulty, too, when I read Пр. & н. for the first time, and in those days I didn’t have my edition lying around to help me. I say to you that any student in 204 willing to spend 2-3 hours of work each class period would be gaining a reading knowledge, with my aids, and, with active work on exercises and composition, she/he would be advancing her/his Russian superbly and they would feel good about it.
Especially valuable is the recorded text of the novel, which I have made available to everyone. I would be glad to give you individual help on taking apart the Dostoevsky text for grammatical purposes. We will try to do more of this in class.
You could make an exhaustive study of how participles and gerunds are used in literary narrative. For as long as you read Russian, you’re going to find them, and in my edition every last gerund and participle is translated and explained.
This, plus the inestimable intrinsic value, as they say, of the literature itself.
Many of you, or some, have worked, in spurts, like this, and done some excellent compositions with original ideas expressed cogently in Russian. And everyone has worked, at some time, or tried to, in good conscience. One or two people have taken the time to talk this over with me, which I appreciate. I know some of you, or many of you (многие из вас; this doesn’t mean absolutely many, but ‘many’ in the group of you) are disappointed to find that her Russian is not getting any better.
I feel like the Zen master who tells his apprenctices to sweep the floor and take out the garbage for a year, and come back in five years. I wonder, how does he feel, in fact?
I’m no Zen master, so I’ve no right to tell you to take out the garbage.
But it’s not over yet; maybe you will still learn some Russian!
gmc
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Seeing into the Future
Seeing into the Future (continued)
March 17, 2010
The old legal codices of Russia abound in conditionals and future tenses, and also even the future perfect tense, or futurum exactum, as we read it in the elegant language of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed. This means that first there is an alleged crime (‘shall have been committed’), and then the accused shall have the right to a speedy trial. Russian could express this by using a form of ‘be’ (future) and the l-participle (what is now the Russian past tense. Here is an example from the Русская правда, the Russian Law (Правда means ‘law’ here):
Пакы ли боудеть что татебно купилъ вь търгоу, или конь или порть или скотиноу, то выведеть свободьна моужа два или мытника. In contemporary Russian: если окажется, что куплено ворованное, то надо представить свидетелей, ‘if it turns out (= OR боудеть in its conditional sense) that what shall have been bought was stolen (татебно), two free witnesses (моужа два) must show this (that it was bought at market’).
The simple future is, as I mentioned last time, expressed by any of three or four modal verbs, each with basic semantics ‘want’, ‘intend’, ‘begin’, ‘turn out to be’, and so forth. But the senses are very labile. I found this example in Gorshkova and Xaburgaev’s Historical Grammar of Russian”, p. 314. Аже не отложишь лишнего дэла и всякое неправды мы хочемъ богоу жаловатися и темъ кто правду любить (Rizhskaja gramota), ‘If you do not cease (perfective future) from your malevolent act and all illegalities we shall be constrained (хочемь) to complain to God and to those will love the law.’ The first basic meaning of хотэти is ‘want, wish; intend’, and here the writer wishes to show what recourses he may have if the evil work of his opponents goes on: namely, God, and those who stand for righteousness in the law.
The future can, of course, be expressed by a perfective present, as in contemporary Russian.
Мы коня не дамъ ни продамы его ‘we will not give up our horse nor sell him’ (Rizhskaja gramota). Note николи же всяду на нь (коня) ни вижу е более ‘I will not ever saddle him (his horse) again nor see him again’; here, in the famous tale of the death of Oleg by his horse, we find a perfective verb with future meaning followed by an imperfective present, also with future sense. In the Laurentian ms we read: идэте с данью домови а я возвращюся похожю и еще ‘go home with the tribute and I will return (imperfective present) and gather more’.
And, indeed, we find lots of unidirectional motion verbs with future meaning, just as in contemporary Russian, German, French, English and so on. From a birchbark letter from Staraja Russa, 13th century: не шли отрока эду самъ и две гривны везу ‘don’t sense a servant, I’m coming myself and will bring two golden coins’. Contemporary Russian: летом едем в Россию, English: we are going to Russia in the summer, German: wir fahren nach Russland im Sommer, French: nous voyageons en Russie cet été (that French looks funny — can anyone correct me?)
I notice that writing я, ю is standard in Old Russian after hushers; this doesn’t indicate softness, rather a morphological marking, e.g. 1st sg present. Just like our students write хочю, чищю, вижю. I don’t think there is a single student ‘mistake’ — that is, a conscious, deliberate attempt to express something in Russian, not a slip of the pen, or a typo — that doesn’t have a prototype in the history of Russian.
So it you start saying буду посмотреть ‘I will look at’ in place of посмотрю ‘I will look at’ (perfective future), I’ll understand. Indeed, if you start writing буду пoсмотрел in the meaning ‘I shall have looked at (something)’ before event X takes place’, I’ll understand that you are making up a future perfect tense just as the Old Russians did.
Not to encourage mischief. But language is a game, you know, it is meant to be played by young and old.
gmc
March 17, 2010
The old legal codices of Russia abound in conditionals and future tenses, and also even the future perfect tense, or futurum exactum, as we read it in the elegant language of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed. This means that first there is an alleged crime (‘shall have been committed’), and then the accused shall have the right to a speedy trial. Russian could express this by using a form of ‘be’ (future) and the l-participle (what is now the Russian past tense. Here is an example from the Русская правда, the Russian Law (Правда means ‘law’ here):
Пакы ли боудеть что татебно купилъ вь търгоу, или конь или порть или скотиноу, то выведеть свободьна моужа два или мытника. In contemporary Russian: если окажется, что куплено ворованное, то надо представить свидетелей, ‘if it turns out (= OR боудеть in its conditional sense) that what shall have been bought was stolen (татебно), two free witnesses (моужа два) must show this (that it was bought at market’).
The simple future is, as I mentioned last time, expressed by any of three or four modal verbs, each with basic semantics ‘want’, ‘intend’, ‘begin’, ‘turn out to be’, and so forth. But the senses are very labile. I found this example in Gorshkova and Xaburgaev’s Historical Grammar of Russian”, p. 314. Аже не отложишь лишнего дэла и всякое неправды мы хочемъ богоу жаловатися и темъ кто правду любить (Rizhskaja gramota), ‘If you do not cease (perfective future) from your malevolent act and all illegalities we shall be constrained (хочемь) to complain to God and to those will love the law.’ The first basic meaning of хотэти is ‘want, wish; intend’, and here the writer wishes to show what recourses he may have if the evil work of his opponents goes on: namely, God, and those who stand for righteousness in the law.
The future can, of course, be expressed by a perfective present, as in contemporary Russian.
Мы коня не дамъ ни продамы его ‘we will not give up our horse nor sell him’ (Rizhskaja gramota). Note николи же всяду на нь (коня) ни вижу е более ‘I will not ever saddle him (his horse) again nor see him again’; here, in the famous tale of the death of Oleg by his horse, we find a perfective verb with future meaning followed by an imperfective present, also with future sense. In the Laurentian ms we read: идэте с данью домови а я возвращюся похожю и еще ‘go home with the tribute and I will return (imperfective present) and gather more’.
And, indeed, we find lots of unidirectional motion verbs with future meaning, just as in contemporary Russian, German, French, English and so on. From a birchbark letter from Staraja Russa, 13th century: не шли отрока эду самъ и две гривны везу ‘don’t sense a servant, I’m coming myself and will bring two golden coins’. Contemporary Russian: летом едем в Россию, English: we are going to Russia in the summer, German: wir fahren nach Russland im Sommer, French: nous voyageons en Russie cet été (that French looks funny — can anyone correct me?)
I notice that writing я, ю is standard in Old Russian after hushers; this doesn’t indicate softness, rather a morphological marking, e.g. 1st sg present. Just like our students write хочю, чищю, вижю. I don’t think there is a single student ‘mistake’ — that is, a conscious, deliberate attempt to express something in Russian, not a slip of the pen, or a typo — that doesn’t have a prototype in the history of Russian.
So it you start saying буду посмотреть ‘I will look at’ in place of посмотрю ‘I will look at’ (perfective future), I’ll understand. Indeed, if you start writing буду пoсмотрел in the meaning ‘I shall have looked at (something)’ before event X takes place’, I’ll understand that you are making up a future perfect tense just as the Old Russians did.
Not to encourage mischief. But language is a game, you know, it is meant to be played by young and old.
gmc
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
In The Future Don't Make This Mistake
In the Future Don’t Make This Mistake
March 16, 2010
I always meditate on the reasons that students utter or write what they do in Russian. Why do they so stubbornly take so long, it seems to me, to learn what is so clear to me as the blue sky on a cloudless day. But there ‘s the rub — it seems to me because I know it as second nature, without questioning whether it makes sense, is counterintuitive, or maybe just a gratuitous solution to a problem in the language that might have been solved a dozen other ways.
Take, for example, my pious insistence that the imperfective infinitive, and it alone, is associated with phasals like начну, кончу and, of course the analytic ‘future tense’ formed by буду. No perfectives allowed. Further, the conjugated form of a perfective verb has a ‘future’ meaning. No if’s, and’s, or but’s — and I am sensitive to such linguistic metaphors. I do know in the back of my mind, of course, that there are lots of ‘exceptions’ to the perfective present = future tense, one of which I will mention here: the modal use of the P future.
Ask someone the time, and she has no watch. “Не скажу,” she says, meaning ‘I can’t tell you’, not ‘I will not tell you.’
The future tense itself is a variety of willed or predicted potentiality which has not occurred. The past can find witnesses and testimony, it may be narrated and celebrated and regretted and analyzed. The present, Nabokov said, is a luminous moving point at the crest of the vastness of the past. The future is a modal predication, a potentiality, a path not yet taken.
In Latin we learned amo, amas, amat, “I love, and so on,” amabo, amabis, amabit, “I will love, and so on,” amabam, amabas, amabat “I used to love, and so on,” as though they share equal and equivalent places in the synopses.
I blithely keep saying спрошу means ‘I will ask’, while буду спрашивать, also future, means ‘I will be asking, will ask repeatedly.’ How far from the truth this might have been, but for a different historical development! In the twelve and thirtreenth centuries Russian had a very different system, though we really aren’t sure, beyond textual examples, how it really worked.
But listen to this: it appears that, for some writers, or speakers, any modal verb: хотэти ‘want, wish’, имати ‘have to, possess’, начати ‘begin’, быти ‘be’ may be used with the infinitive of either aspect, to make a kind of future, but a kind that probably differentiated carefully among the modals. I repeat: with an infinitive of either aspect, not merely imperfective. Further news for the Delphic oracle: the present tense itself, in some usages, seems to mean future — the present tense of either aspect.
This sounds like our students’ delight: use any modal, any aspect, and, as with Humpty Dumpty, it means future, if I want it to mean future.
(By the way, as an aside: I find the verb хотэти with the first plural хочем, just like our students: хочу, хочешь, хочет, хочем, хочете, хочут. Why on earth didn’t it stay that way?)
The forms of буду аre often used in conditionals with the modal meaning ‘if it should happen, if it turns out’.
More later,
gmc
March 16, 2010
I always meditate on the reasons that students utter or write what they do in Russian. Why do they so stubbornly take so long, it seems to me, to learn what is so clear to me as the blue sky on a cloudless day. But there ‘s the rub — it seems to me because I know it as second nature, without questioning whether it makes sense, is counterintuitive, or maybe just a gratuitous solution to a problem in the language that might have been solved a dozen other ways.
Take, for example, my pious insistence that the imperfective infinitive, and it alone, is associated with phasals like начну, кончу and, of course the analytic ‘future tense’ formed by буду. No perfectives allowed. Further, the conjugated form of a perfective verb has a ‘future’ meaning. No if’s, and’s, or but’s — and I am sensitive to such linguistic metaphors. I do know in the back of my mind, of course, that there are lots of ‘exceptions’ to the perfective present = future tense, one of which I will mention here: the modal use of the P future.
Ask someone the time, and she has no watch. “Не скажу,” she says, meaning ‘I can’t tell you’, not ‘I will not tell you.’
The future tense itself is a variety of willed or predicted potentiality which has not occurred. The past can find witnesses and testimony, it may be narrated and celebrated and regretted and analyzed. The present, Nabokov said, is a luminous moving point at the crest of the vastness of the past. The future is a modal predication, a potentiality, a path not yet taken.
In Latin we learned amo, amas, amat, “I love, and so on,” amabo, amabis, amabit, “I will love, and so on,” amabam, amabas, amabat “I used to love, and so on,” as though they share equal and equivalent places in the synopses.
I blithely keep saying спрошу means ‘I will ask’, while буду спрашивать, also future, means ‘I will be asking, will ask repeatedly.’ How far from the truth this might have been, but for a different historical development! In the twelve and thirtreenth centuries Russian had a very different system, though we really aren’t sure, beyond textual examples, how it really worked.
But listen to this: it appears that, for some writers, or speakers, any modal verb: хотэти ‘want, wish’, имати ‘have to, possess’, начати ‘begin’, быти ‘be’ may be used with the infinitive of either aspect, to make a kind of future, but a kind that probably differentiated carefully among the modals. I repeat: with an infinitive of either aspect, not merely imperfective. Further news for the Delphic oracle: the present tense itself, in some usages, seems to mean future — the present tense of either aspect.
This sounds like our students’ delight: use any modal, any aspect, and, as with Humpty Dumpty, it means future, if I want it to mean future.
(By the way, as an aside: I find the verb хотэти with the first plural хочем, just like our students: хочу, хочешь, хочет, хочем, хочете, хочут. Why on earth didn’t it stay that way?)
The forms of буду аre often used in conditionals with the modal meaning ‘if it should happen, if it turns out’.
More later,
gmc
Taking notes; Chomsky attacks my teaching
Note-taking; Chomsky attacks language teaching
When I was a student, I took notes in class in notebooks that were meant to be kept to the end of the term. I wrote down the instructor’s central points, his likes and dislikes — with lots of doodles and fanciful drawings on the side, like Dostoevsky did in the pages of his novels, except that he could really draw (so also could Pushkin and Lermontov, but not I). In a language class I would invariably note down the main thrusts of the drills, conversations, and lectures, unless, of course, it was all too boringly obvious anyway. I would use class notes to study for the finals. It is a very good system, but one which, I note to my sorrow and dismay, students have long ago abandonned. They often sit in class as though at an aesthetic experience, like a bullfight, say, or a play. More like a play or a pantomime, I suppose, in my classes. They think, of course, that they will remember everything important. Nothing can be any further from the truth.
You all ought to do this. What’s more, you should print out my “work for the week” files and realy pour over them, beccause they are the keys to the course. You may choose not to do this, but you lose, you lose.
Still, my policy is never to instruct students on methodology of learning. Instead, I coddle them by printing out numerous copies of the work and passing them out to helpless-looking students, more out of pity than anything else. In 204 I passed out seven such copies, to seven helpless-looking, but otherwise very intelligent, students. I could go on, but I won’t.
Now for the intrinsic weaknesses of lerarning a language in an academic environment. Chomsky always told me not to teach Russian, because nobody knows how people can learn it. “It’s a hopeless, useless task,” he told me, with his usual exaggerated sarcasm. “What you will end up doing is getting people enthusiastic about going there for themselves.” I guess he was right. All the grammar we teach is taught not by the natural methods that people use to learn.
Case in point: my latest quiz, focusing on, among other things, к Ивану, к бабушке, у Ивана, у бабушки. You all had the preposition к engraved in your alpha waves when you came for the quiz yesterday, and so you started writing к Москвe, к русскому уроку in motion expressions, when you’re supposed to say в Москву, на русский урок. It’s our fault for focusing on so many details at once. A child, learning, will also over-generalize, but he will adjust with lightning speed to the context that shapes the details.
Another example: a few weeks ago we learned спасибо за книгу, спасибо за кассеты ‘thanks for the book’, ‘thanks for the cassettes’. Now in our recent 102 quiz, you were thinking ‘Vova wants her to bring something for Belka,’ so the very best students wrote принести колбасу (что–нибудь) за Белку. Not right, but a brilliant extension, or abductive jump, made with the alacrity of a child’s brain.
I still believe it is possible to learn something in a language class, but Chomsky now tells me: “Yes, they will learn something, but you won’t know what.” He’s a bit too sure of himself, isn’t he?
gmc
When I was a student, I took notes in class in notebooks that were meant to be kept to the end of the term. I wrote down the instructor’s central points, his likes and dislikes — with lots of doodles and fanciful drawings on the side, like Dostoevsky did in the pages of his novels, except that he could really draw (so also could Pushkin and Lermontov, but not I). In a language class I would invariably note down the main thrusts of the drills, conversations, and lectures, unless, of course, it was all too boringly obvious anyway. I would use class notes to study for the finals. It is a very good system, but one which, I note to my sorrow and dismay, students have long ago abandonned. They often sit in class as though at an aesthetic experience, like a bullfight, say, or a play. More like a play or a pantomime, I suppose, in my classes. They think, of course, that they will remember everything important. Nothing can be any further from the truth.
You all ought to do this. What’s more, you should print out my “work for the week” files and realy pour over them, beccause they are the keys to the course. You may choose not to do this, but you lose, you lose.
Still, my policy is never to instruct students on methodology of learning. Instead, I coddle them by printing out numerous copies of the work and passing them out to helpless-looking students, more out of pity than anything else. In 204 I passed out seven such copies, to seven helpless-looking, but otherwise very intelligent, students. I could go on, but I won’t.
Now for the intrinsic weaknesses of lerarning a language in an academic environment. Chomsky always told me not to teach Russian, because nobody knows how people can learn it. “It’s a hopeless, useless task,” he told me, with his usual exaggerated sarcasm. “What you will end up doing is getting people enthusiastic about going there for themselves.” I guess he was right. All the grammar we teach is taught not by the natural methods that people use to learn.
Case in point: my latest quiz, focusing on, among other things, к Ивану, к бабушке, у Ивана, у бабушки. You all had the preposition к engraved in your alpha waves when you came for the quiz yesterday, and so you started writing к Москвe, к русскому уроку in motion expressions, when you’re supposed to say в Москву, на русский урок. It’s our fault for focusing on so many details at once. A child, learning, will also over-generalize, but he will adjust with lightning speed to the context that shapes the details.
Another example: a few weeks ago we learned спасибо за книгу, спасибо за кассеты ‘thanks for the book’, ‘thanks for the cassettes’. Now in our recent 102 quiz, you were thinking ‘Vova wants her to bring something for Belka,’ so the very best students wrote принести колбасу (что–нибудь) за Белку. Not right, but a brilliant extension, or abductive jump, made with the alacrity of a child’s brain.
I still believe it is possible to learn something in a language class, but Chomsky now tells me: “Yes, they will learn something, but you won’t know what.” He’s a bit too sure of himself, isn’t he?
gmc
Monday, March 15, 2010
Definitely
March 15, 2010
Definitely
Like ждать, which may take the accusative with a definite and a genitive with an indefinite, there are many perfectives with accusative vs. imperfectives with genitive that do this too. Выпил воду ‘he drank up the water (acc), пил воды ‘he drank some water (gen. partitive)’. There are other variations of this, and the overt aspectual and nominal categories do not in themselves mark definiteness.
The category of definiteness can, however, be marked by proper names, as we have seen, by possessive and demonstrative pronouns — they all presuppose a context — and by a wide variety of pronominal anaphoras.
I like literary examples, as you know. Remember in Dostoevsky’s The Demons, when Petr Verkhovensky comes to egg Kirillov on to his promised suicide, which V. is going to use to his own nefarious ends, he says “Я за тем самым.” “I’ve come for ‘it’, or ‘for that very thing’. Этот самый ‘that very same, that same person (we two were thinking about). Это, ‘this; that’ as introductory element is used to pronominalize any new entity, abstract, concrete, singular or plural, idea, complex background — anything. Это — мои родители. Это — очень точное определение понятия пост–советское. ‘These are my parents. This is a very precise definition of the concept ‘post-Soviet’.
The demonstrative это, used to as an attributive, bears agreement but can also be used to refer to anything. As in English.
Миша хочет стать партнером в нашей фирме, и пишет мэйлы всем знакомым, просит их помощи. Ты знаешь об э т о м ?
“Misha wants to become a partner in our firm, he’s writing emails to all his friends and acquaintances and asking their help. Do you know about this?”
Demonstratives in Russian may be pressed into service whenever their referentiality can make a definite precisely definite, as in relatives, where тот is useful.
Я поставил ту книгу, о которой ты спросил, в твой ящик. ‘I put the (that) book you asked about in your mailbox.’
In Czech and Polish the demonstrative ten is so frequent in definite senses that it is verging on acquiring the status of a definite article.
In Russian and Czech the demonstrative can be used in place of a pronoun. На улицe я увидел нескольких студентов, но тe меня не заметили. 'On the street i say several of my students, but they didn't notice me.'
Conversely, in many of our familiar European languages, the numeral ‘one’ is the eventual source for the indefinite article, as German ein, French un, and, of course, English a(n).
Still, you have to admit that in the North Slavic languages — Russian, Ukrainian, Belorusian, Czech, Polish, Sorbian — there exists no overt category of definiteness. And you have to admit that the speakers of those languages know what this means, and have a devil of a time learning how to implement definiteness in English. It’s the last thing they learn, if ever.
gmc
Definitely
Like ждать, which may take the accusative with a definite and a genitive with an indefinite, there are many perfectives with accusative vs. imperfectives with genitive that do this too. Выпил воду ‘he drank up the water (acc), пил воды ‘he drank some water (gen. partitive)’. There are other variations of this, and the overt aspectual and nominal categories do not in themselves mark definiteness.
The category of definiteness can, however, be marked by proper names, as we have seen, by possessive and demonstrative pronouns — they all presuppose a context — and by a wide variety of pronominal anaphoras.
I like literary examples, as you know. Remember in Dostoevsky’s The Demons, when Petr Verkhovensky comes to egg Kirillov on to his promised suicide, which V. is going to use to his own nefarious ends, he says “Я за тем самым.” “I’ve come for ‘it’, or ‘for that very thing’. Этот самый ‘that very same, that same person (we two were thinking about). Это, ‘this; that’ as introductory element is used to pronominalize any new entity, abstract, concrete, singular or plural, idea, complex background — anything. Это — мои родители. Это — очень точное определение понятия пост–советское. ‘These are my parents. This is a very precise definition of the concept ‘post-Soviet’.
The demonstrative это, used to as an attributive, bears agreement but can also be used to refer to anything. As in English.
Миша хочет стать партнером в нашей фирме, и пишет мэйлы всем знакомым, просит их помощи. Ты знаешь об э т о м ?
“Misha wants to become a partner in our firm, he’s writing emails to all his friends and acquaintances and asking their help. Do you know about this?”
Demonstratives in Russian may be pressed into service whenever their referentiality can make a definite precisely definite, as in relatives, where тот is useful.
Я поставил ту книгу, о которой ты спросил, в твой ящик. ‘I put the (that) book you asked about in your mailbox.’
In Czech and Polish the demonstrative ten is so frequent in definite senses that it is verging on acquiring the status of a definite article.
In Russian and Czech the demonstrative can be used in place of a pronoun. На улицe я увидел нескольких студентов, но тe меня не заметили. 'On the street i say several of my students, but they didn't notice me.'
Conversely, in many of our familiar European languages, the numeral ‘one’ is the eventual source for the indefinite article, as German ein, French un, and, of course, English a(n).
Still, you have to admit that in the North Slavic languages — Russian, Ukrainian, Belorusian, Czech, Polish, Sorbian — there exists no overt category of definiteness. And you have to admit that the speakers of those languages know what this means, and have a devil of a time learning how to implement definiteness in English. It’s the last thing they learn, if ever.
gmc
Friday, March 12, 2010
Waiting for Godot
March 12, 2010
Waiting for Godot
‘Wait for’ in Russian is expressed by the verb ждать with the accusative or the genitive case. When with the accusative, it marks a definite noun phrase; with the genitive, the phrase is indefinite. This is a slight simplification of the facts, but it’s so.
— Мы ждём поезда. We are waiting for a train (or simply: the train, any train).
— Мы ждём поезд в Петербург. We are waiting for the Petersburg train.
— Мы ждём письма от родитилей. We are waiting for a letter from our parents.
— Мы ждём письмо, которое должно содержать деньги. We are waiting for a/the letter which should contain some money.
An extended meaning of this verb is ‘hope for, await’; it usually is associated with the genitive, as indefinite. Я жду окончательной победы ‘’I expect a final victory’.
Since proper names are by definition definite, they always come in the accusative: я жду брата, жду сестру и маму.
How can we tell that брата is accusative, since the animate accusative form is taken from the genitive? We can’t until we see an example with an obvious accusative, like Женю, Ваню, сестру, маму.
‘I am expecting (I am pregnant)’ is жду ребёнка. I think this is probably genitive, but you can argue this.
How can a Russian dictionary tell us what case or cases a verb takes? Look ждать up in Ожегов and you will find an example leading off the discussion which has кого–что ‘whom/what’, which is a clear indication of the accusative — if it were only genitive, you’d find кого–чего. After all, Russians don’t know about definiteness and indefiniteness, but they do know that кто что, кого чего, кому чему, о ком о чём, кем, чем is a paradigm to help find case endings.
Is this any help, Sasha?
gmc
Waiting for Godot
‘Wait for’ in Russian is expressed by the verb ждать with the accusative or the genitive case. When with the accusative, it marks a definite noun phrase; with the genitive, the phrase is indefinite. This is a slight simplification of the facts, but it’s so.
— Мы ждём поезда. We are waiting for a train (or simply: the train, any train).
— Мы ждём поезд в Петербург. We are waiting for the Petersburg train.
— Мы ждём письма от родитилей. We are waiting for a letter from our parents.
— Мы ждём письмо, которое должно содержать деньги. We are waiting for a/the letter which should contain some money.
An extended meaning of this verb is ‘hope for, await’; it usually is associated with the genitive, as indefinite. Я жду окончательной победы ‘’I expect a final victory’.
Since proper names are by definition definite, they always come in the accusative: я жду брата, жду сестру и маму.
How can we tell that брата is accusative, since the animate accusative form is taken from the genitive? We can’t until we see an example with an obvious accusative, like Женю, Ваню, сестру, маму.
‘I am expecting (I am pregnant)’ is жду ребёнка. I think this is probably genitive, but you can argue this.
How can a Russian dictionary tell us what case or cases a verb takes? Look ждать up in Ожегов and you will find an example leading off the discussion which has кого–что ‘whom/what’, which is a clear indication of the accusative — if it were only genitive, you’d find кого–чего. After all, Russians don’t know about definiteness and indefiniteness, but they do know that кто что, кого чего, кому чему, о ком о чём, кем, чем is a paradigm to help find case endings.
Is this any help, Sasha?
gmc
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Definiteness and Indefiniteness
March 10, 2010
Definiteness and Indefiniteness
Russian, as we know, has no articles. Indeed, words like ‘a, an, the’ prove to be the most difficult for L2 learners of English to master. ‘I read book,’ says the learner. But in English an entity has to be categorized by how much the speaker and his listeners know about it. If a Russian has been telling you that he’s reading a book in English, and you see him the next day and he says “I read book,” you can reconstruct ‘I am reading the/that book (I told you about)’ out of the sentence. But without context we are helpless. So what book?
When we use ‘the’, or proper names, we assume some past context. “Old man Fisher came.” “The cat got in the fishbowl.” “Want to go to Couter’s tonight?”
When we use ‘a’ we are introducing a new entity into the conversation that hasn’t been identified or given any context. “There is a strange man in the waiting room.” “Did you run through a red light on the way home tonight?” In the former sentence, ‘there is’ is a way of signalling the introduction of a new, specific-indefinite entity. In the second, the question signals that the noun phrase ‘a red light’ is indefinite but non-specific. We want to know whether any red light was encountered. “Did you know that you ran a red light tonight?” Here the speaker is informing his interlocutor about a specific entity that he wants to mention.
Now, what about Russian? Names, as in English, are definite, and are treated as such. — Приходила Ирина. ‘Irina was here.’ (Note the I verb, hinting that she came and subsequently left.) — Не хочешь к Старой лошади сегодня вечером? ‘Don’t you want to go to the Old Horse [a bar] tonight?’
But what about common nouns, nouns that are not proper names? Here the flexible word order and distinctive intonation of Russian both play big roles. The new information, or the rheme, usually comes at sentence-end; so also, do indefinites.
— В комнате стоит незнакомый человек. — Незнакомый человек стоит в комнате.
‘A strange man is in the room.’
— Кто читает? — Читает Маша. ‘Who is reading? Masha is reading.’ In this sentence we see that a definite can also be in the final position of the rheme or new information. So also Вчера на улице я видел вашу сестру. ‘I saw your sister on the street yesterday.’
So context is all-important for identifying an indefinite. Читая Достоевского, я входил в новый, чудесный, совершенно незнакомый мне душевный мир. ‘As I read Dostoevsky, I entered a new, miraculous new world that had been completely unknown to me.’
Gogol played with definiteness as he did with all grammatical categories. Look at the beginning of Шинель, The Overcoat. В департаменте...но нельзя сказать, в каком департменте. Ничего нет сердитого всякого рода департаментов... Итак, департамент, о котором идет дело, мы назовем одним департаментом. Итак... в одном департаменте служил один чиновник.
‘In a department...but I can’t say in what department. No one is more easily angered than departments of all sorts... So, the department in which our business is taking place, we will call “a certain department.” So... in a certain department there worked a certain civil servant.’
‘Certain’, and Russian один, may mark a specific indefinite that the speaker knows something — perhaps a great deal — about. Not in every case does English ‘certain’ answer Russian один.
— У него в поведении какая–то угловатость, нескладность. ‘In his behavior there is a certain angularity, a stiff unjointedness.’ The indefinite какой–то marks a specific indefinite which the speaker can’t yet define more closely.
The indefinite какой–нибудь, on the other hand, is for an entity which is probably non–specific. This we see in questions, as in у вас есть какие–нибудь вопросы, ‘do you have any questions?’
Next time: how the authors of Начало (correctly! for a change) explain the definiteness/indefiniteness of the object of ждать ‘wait for’.
gmc
Definiteness and Indefiniteness
Russian, as we know, has no articles. Indeed, words like ‘a, an, the’ prove to be the most difficult for L2 learners of English to master. ‘I read book,’ says the learner. But in English an entity has to be categorized by how much the speaker and his listeners know about it. If a Russian has been telling you that he’s reading a book in English, and you see him the next day and he says “I read book,” you can reconstruct ‘I am reading the/that book (I told you about)’ out of the sentence. But without context we are helpless. So what book?
When we use ‘the’, or proper names, we assume some past context. “Old man Fisher came.” “The cat got in the fishbowl.” “Want to go to Couter’s tonight?”
When we use ‘a’ we are introducing a new entity into the conversation that hasn’t been identified or given any context. “There is a strange man in the waiting room.” “Did you run through a red light on the way home tonight?” In the former sentence, ‘there is’ is a way of signalling the introduction of a new, specific-indefinite entity. In the second, the question signals that the noun phrase ‘a red light’ is indefinite but non-specific. We want to know whether any red light was encountered. “Did you know that you ran a red light tonight?” Here the speaker is informing his interlocutor about a specific entity that he wants to mention.
Now, what about Russian? Names, as in English, are definite, and are treated as such. — Приходила Ирина. ‘Irina was here.’ (Note the I verb, hinting that she came and subsequently left.) — Не хочешь к Старой лошади сегодня вечером? ‘Don’t you want to go to the Old Horse [a bar] tonight?’
But what about common nouns, nouns that are not proper names? Here the flexible word order and distinctive intonation of Russian both play big roles. The new information, or the rheme, usually comes at sentence-end; so also, do indefinites.
— В комнате стоит незнакомый человек. — Незнакомый человек стоит в комнате.
‘A strange man is in the room.’
— Кто читает? — Читает Маша. ‘Who is reading? Masha is reading.’ In this sentence we see that a definite can also be in the final position of the rheme or new information. So also Вчера на улице я видел вашу сестру. ‘I saw your sister on the street yesterday.’
So context is all-important for identifying an indefinite. Читая Достоевского, я входил в новый, чудесный, совершенно незнакомый мне душевный мир. ‘As I read Dostoevsky, I entered a new, miraculous new world that had been completely unknown to me.’
Gogol played with definiteness as he did with all grammatical categories. Look at the beginning of Шинель, The Overcoat. В департаменте...но нельзя сказать, в каком департменте. Ничего нет сердитого всякого рода департаментов... Итак, департамент, о котором идет дело, мы назовем одним департаментом. Итак... в одном департаменте служил один чиновник.
‘In a department...but I can’t say in what department. No one is more easily angered than departments of all sorts... So, the department in which our business is taking place, we will call “a certain department.” So... in a certain department there worked a certain civil servant.’
‘Certain’, and Russian один, may mark a specific indefinite that the speaker knows something — perhaps a great deal — about. Not in every case does English ‘certain’ answer Russian один.
— У него в поведении какая–то угловатость, нескладность. ‘In his behavior there is a certain angularity, a stiff unjointedness.’ The indefinite какой–то marks a specific indefinite which the speaker can’t yet define more closely.
The indefinite какой–нибудь, on the other hand, is for an entity which is probably non–specific. This we see in questions, as in у вас есть какие–нибудь вопросы, ‘do you have any questions?’
Next time: how the authors of Начало (correctly! for a change) explain the definiteness/indefiniteness of the object of ждать ‘wait for’.
gmc
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Deixis; semantic questions
March 8, 2010
Deixis and Semantics
In elementary Russian we learn that the adverb долго means ‘for a long time’: я долго работал, ‘I worked for a long time’. But if we want to relate the ‘long time’ or extent of a process or state to now, that is, to relate this to the speech-time, we use давно, as in я давно работаю в Тулэйне, ‘I have been working at Tulane for a long time’. Note the wonderful English present progressive aspect, which is so difficult, ironically, for Russians to learn. ‘I work long time at Tulane’ just isn’t good enough in English.
When the postal lady in Начало wants to explain why she hasn’t gotten everybody’s magazines and newspapers delivered correctly, she says я недавно работаю на почте, ‘I’ve only recently been working at the post office’, literally ‘I not-long-time work at post office’. Cf. French j’habite ici depuis longtemps ‘I’ve been living here ‘since’ a long time, with that French adverb depuis serving to fix the start of a state in the past and carry it up into the present moment, just as давно does.
“Have you been studying Russian long?'
“Almost a year.”
— Вы давно изучаете русский?
— Почти год.
Suppose you want to say that a single event occurred a long time ago; the event is in the perfective past, say я написал письмо о новой квартире ‘I wrote a letter about the new apartment’, Insert давно: я давно написал письмо ‘I wrote a letter a long time ago’. This signals that the event of writing the letter was distant in the past from the reference point of the speaker, in this case, the present.
Suppose you are telling a story in the past tense. “I was at home after work. I had been home/had long ago arrived home a long time when the phone rang. It was my old friend Dmitriy.” Я был дома после работы. Я давно уже пришел домой, когда зазвонил телефон. This is like the pluperfect tense, which as you know, doesn’t exist as such in Russian. It may be helped along by the aspectual particle уже, as above. ‘I had arrived home long since when the telephone rang.”
Давным–давно ‘long, long ago’ is used to introduce and characterize the temporal distance of an event. It is narrative.
I like contraries, antonyms, and opposites. They often reveal an internal asymmetry, as in young and old, tall and short, quick and slow. We say ‘how old are you?’ and ‘how tall are you?’.The Russian word редко means ‘rarely’ and часто means ‘often.’ The word изредка, built out of the preposition из ‘out of’ and the word редко, is glossed to mean ‘sometimes; not often’, which is indeed not exactly the same as ‘rarely’. It is ‘rarely’ with something else added, perhaps an attentuative or a weakening of ‘rarely’; it is almost ‘sporadically’ but not quite ‘from time to time’. It is ‘rarely’, but not so baldly so, and it is not quite ‘sometimes’.
I believe there is no such thing as perfect synonymy; there’s always some subtle difference between two synonyms, be it register — the context of discourse — or style or nuance of diction.
Next time: how Russian expresses definite and indefinite articles.
gmc
Deixis and Semantics
In elementary Russian we learn that the adverb долго means ‘for a long time’: я долго работал, ‘I worked for a long time’. But if we want to relate the ‘long time’ or extent of a process or state to now, that is, to relate this to the speech-time, we use давно, as in я давно работаю в Тулэйне, ‘I have been working at Tulane for a long time’. Note the wonderful English present progressive aspect, which is so difficult, ironically, for Russians to learn. ‘I work long time at Tulane’ just isn’t good enough in English.
When the postal lady in Начало wants to explain why she hasn’t gotten everybody’s magazines and newspapers delivered correctly, she says я недавно работаю на почте, ‘I’ve only recently been working at the post office’, literally ‘I not-long-time work at post office’. Cf. French j’habite ici depuis longtemps ‘I’ve been living here ‘since’ a long time, with that French adverb depuis serving to fix the start of a state in the past and carry it up into the present moment, just as давно does.
“Have you been studying Russian long?'
“Almost a year.”
— Вы давно изучаете русский?
— Почти год.
Suppose you want to say that a single event occurred a long time ago; the event is in the perfective past, say я написал письмо о новой квартире ‘I wrote a letter about the new apartment’, Insert давно: я давно написал письмо ‘I wrote a letter a long time ago’. This signals that the event of writing the letter was distant in the past from the reference point of the speaker, in this case, the present.
Suppose you are telling a story in the past tense. “I was at home after work. I had been home/had long ago arrived home a long time when the phone rang. It was my old friend Dmitriy.” Я был дома после работы. Я давно уже пришел домой, когда зазвонил телефон. This is like the pluperfect tense, which as you know, doesn’t exist as such in Russian. It may be helped along by the aspectual particle уже, as above. ‘I had arrived home long since when the telephone rang.”
Давным–давно ‘long, long ago’ is used to introduce and characterize the temporal distance of an event. It is narrative.
I like contraries, antonyms, and opposites. They often reveal an internal asymmetry, as in young and old, tall and short, quick and slow. We say ‘how old are you?’ and ‘how tall are you?’.The Russian word редко means ‘rarely’ and часто means ‘often.’ The word изредка, built out of the preposition из ‘out of’ and the word редко, is glossed to mean ‘sometimes; not often’, which is indeed not exactly the same as ‘rarely’. It is ‘rarely’ with something else added, perhaps an attentuative or a weakening of ‘rarely’; it is almost ‘sporadically’ but not quite ‘from time to time’. It is ‘rarely’, but not so baldly so, and it is not quite ‘sometimes’.
I believe there is no such thing as perfect synonymy; there’s always some subtle difference between two synonyms, be it register — the context of discourse — or style or nuance of diction.
Next time: how Russian expresses definite and indefinite articles.
gmc
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Кому учиться через Пр и н?
February 28, 2010
How Can One Learn Russian Through Dostoevsky?
Как учиться русскому через Достоевского?
Well, I am not sure anynore. There has been a бунт, a rebellion, in my 204 course — I use the word that entitles the chapter in Братья Карамазовы in which Ivan details the crimes of men against innocent children.
So I feel like the God to whom Ivan decided to return the ticket of life — thanks, but no thanks, not on these terms.
Well, here are some ideas. I, in your position, I would really, really study the text, with my notes. I would listen to the recording of the Russian actor reading these pages; it’s a couple of hours in length for Part I, Chapters 1-7, those pages we are reading. I think the experience of reading over and over again, without having to use the dictionary, is a marvelous learning vehicle by itself. I would listen to the voices of the всеведущий рассказчик, пьяный Мармеладов, дорогая мамаша (которую Родя любит). I would memorize a few pages by heart for recitation.
But these are practices of mine that you know about already. You may have heard my recitation of the first eight pages of Nakobov’s chapter on Chernyshevsky. But you are not me. I already know a lot of Russian, you do not. How could you memorize pages from Crime and Punishment?
But you could, you could.
Some of you have objected that not all the words are on the bottom of the page. This argument is vitiated: true, true; but those words not on the page are in the glossary in the back of the book, so all the words are in the book. Those in the glossary are the most frequent words in the text, and you might read the glossary to see what they are. You do not need a dicitonary to read this.
But, as Byron justifiably complainted to me, you feel that you are losing your grip on Russian language. (At least Dostoevsky is not making you lose your grip on your sanity.) I understand; you want to continue advancing all your skills and feeling your speaking/writing/grammar atrophy. Indeed, I agree.
So I am encapsulating some grammar topics that are really and truly useful, in distinction to the abstract musings of Jakobson’s conjugation rules. I will jump on examples in our text that can present these grammar topics. So far: infinitive constructions, predications with не–, real and unreal conditions, and more. I will give you great examples from the heart of the novel itself.
A good example: Нет мамаша, нет Дунечка, не обмануть меня вам. Raskoln’kov here says, bitterly and angrily: “No, darling mother, no dear Dunia, you’re not going to trick me.” Here you see the tremendous modal power of the Russian infinitive. Check the word order: ‘not to trick me is-it-to-you (dative)’. And our latest handout has a set of expressive unreal conditions from a letter of the young Dostoevsky to his brother.
I think you have to tell me, precisely, what grammar you want to look at. Sasha has already mentioned that you want to speak more in class. She's right I am sure.
So we still have eight weeks left, and a magnificent murder lies ahead for us!
Счастливо,gmc
How Can One Learn Russian Through Dostoevsky?
Как учиться русскому через Достоевского?
Well, I am not sure anynore. There has been a бунт, a rebellion, in my 204 course — I use the word that entitles the chapter in Братья Карамазовы in which Ivan details the crimes of men against innocent children.
So I feel like the God to whom Ivan decided to return the ticket of life — thanks, but no thanks, not on these terms.
Well, here are some ideas. I, in your position, I would really, really study the text, with my notes. I would listen to the recording of the Russian actor reading these pages; it’s a couple of hours in length for Part I, Chapters 1-7, those pages we are reading. I think the experience of reading over and over again, without having to use the dictionary, is a marvelous learning vehicle by itself. I would listen to the voices of the всеведущий рассказчик, пьяный Мармеладов, дорогая мамаша (которую Родя любит). I would memorize a few pages by heart for recitation.
But these are practices of mine that you know about already. You may have heard my recitation of the first eight pages of Nakobov’s chapter on Chernyshevsky. But you are not me. I already know a lot of Russian, you do not. How could you memorize pages from Crime and Punishment?
But you could, you could.
Some of you have objected that not all the words are on the bottom of the page. This argument is vitiated: true, true; but those words not on the page are in the glossary in the back of the book, so all the words are in the book. Those in the glossary are the most frequent words in the text, and you might read the glossary to see what they are. You do not need a dicitonary to read this.
But, as Byron justifiably complainted to me, you feel that you are losing your grip on Russian language. (At least Dostoevsky is not making you lose your grip on your sanity.) I understand; you want to continue advancing all your skills and feeling your speaking/writing/grammar atrophy. Indeed, I agree.
So I am encapsulating some grammar topics that are really and truly useful, in distinction to the abstract musings of Jakobson’s conjugation rules. I will jump on examples in our text that can present these grammar topics. So far: infinitive constructions, predications with не–, real and unreal conditions, and more. I will give you great examples from the heart of the novel itself.
A good example: Нет мамаша, нет Дунечка, не обмануть меня вам. Raskoln’kov here says, bitterly and angrily: “No, darling mother, no dear Dunia, you’re not going to trick me.” Here you see the tremendous modal power of the Russian infinitive. Check the word order: ‘not to trick me is-it-to-you (dative)’. And our latest handout has a set of expressive unreal conditions from a letter of the young Dostoevsky to his brother.
I think you have to tell me, precisely, what grammar you want to look at. Sasha has already mentioned that you want to speak more in class. She's right I am sure.
So we still have eight weeks left, and a magnificent murder lies ahead for us!
Счастливо,gmc
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Last Chapter on Conjugation
February 24, 2010
Russian Conjugation -- Finale
I’ve omitted quite a few details, all of which in the long run are important one way or another, but this has gone on long enough. We need a demonstration of what all this does and what its descriptive power is like.
Let’s take some of the base forms for verbs I discussed at the beginning of this discussion. The morphophemic stem p’ok is a velar stem, so it will have substitutive softening in the present endings 2nd sg to 2nd pl. The vocalic endings will have round vowels u and o, according to the rule of acuteness attraction, since the stem is itself unstressed, so that all endings bear a stress. So here is the present tense: p’okU, p’očOš, p’očOt, p’očOm, p’očOt’e, p’okUt. In Cyrillic this is пеку печёшь печёт печём печёте пекут. (The phonemic transcription will reveal the reductions in the vowels: p’iku p’ičoš.) The infinitive will be печь, as velar stems have infinitives in чь and o is not permitted between two soft or palatal consonants. The past tense will be, phonemically, p’ok, p’ikla, p’ikl’i, with end-stress everywhere, as the velar stems have, and with the masc ending l suppressed. The imperative, also stressed, will have i, causing bare softening: пеки.
This shows us that in producing the forms of the present, infinitive, and past tenses the stem category must be specified, since it spells out lexically within its entry the movement of stress and the interplay of consonants and vowels at morpheme boundaries. These interplays may be strongly conditioned by the category of the verb, namely, the type of the last C and the stress pattern.
The general rules, for example, V(1) plus V (2) > V(2), C(1) plus C(2) > C(2), apply across all stem categories. To see how widespread this is, let’s look at the verbs ending in j (spelled й, or as a soft vowel letter after a vowel). These are suffixed stems, unlike p’ok, and embrace a variety of derived stems, like спрашивать, опазывать, советовать, делать, уметь. Note that, of course, there is no jot (j) in any of these infinitives. Why? Because the j, seen as a C, is deleted before a C ending (an ending beginning in C), and so jot disappears before infinitive and past, but is maintained in the present and imperative with their V endings.
So: делаю делаешь делает делаем делаете делают. Note that to the learner the endings seem to be –ю, –ешь, –ет, еtc., which are analyzed into j-u, j-iš, etc. here. This analysis is hard to teach because the very Cyrillic spelling seems to belie it.
In Jakobson’s analysis, the endings are not ю, ешь. ет, etc., but rather u, iš, it, im it’i, ut, in phonemic transcription with reduced vowels. The phonemic spelling is crucial, because the rule of intensity attraction predicts unstressed endings will begin with a high (diffuse) vowel: u, i. And so it is. The morphophonemic base stem is d’él-aj—, showing the interior root and stem, with stem-stress througout. This predicts all of the forms of the verb. The jod is everywhere and in every case deleted before any C.
Most handbooks give the endings as the naive student sees them, and conveniently contrast them with stressed endings spelled like иду идёшь идёт идём идёте идут. The problem with jod remains, however. What was it doing in the endings of делать and then disappearing in идти? When you look at these stems in the wider context of Russian verbs, you have to concede that the jod is part of the verb stem that appears only before V, just like the n in denu, the v in živu.
In verbs like давать даЮ даёшь даёт, where the vowel of the ending bears stress (this is the so-called deep truncation before va), the vowel changes to o, as a stressed V in a hard stem (rule of acuteness attraction).
It is interesting that in Russian spelling we see e for phonemic i, and ё for phonemic o. The o developed from stressed e in Old Russian. Nonetheless Jakobson points out that the vowel of плАчешь ‘you weep’ and and that of вИдишь ‘you see’ are phonemically the same. In a more abstract analysis, you might want to derive the former from an underlying o, and the latter from an i. This, however, goes outside of Jakobson’s model, which in itself captures an important generalization.
Some more examples, to see what generalizations they conceal.
Жить живу живёшь живут, жил, жилА, жили. This is a resonant stem in v that behaves very much like jot stems, also resonants. The v is lost before the C-endings of infinitive and past. Endings of the present are stressed, and so bear the rounded vowels if not soft (rule of acuteness attraction). The morphophonemic base živ lacks a stress, so that the present endings are stressed, but in the past, there is mobile stress — only the feminine ending bears the stress, otherwise it stays on the stem.
Compare the stress of unstressed suffixed stems, where the mobility appears in the present, but the past has stressed fixed on the theme vowel. There is only one suffixed stems that has past mobility: родитьс(ся) родился, родилась 'to be born'. These may be very important verbs, e.g. l’ubi, kup’i, p’isa, poluči. Example of mobility: куплЮ кУпишь кУпит кУпим кУпите кУпят. купил, past tense купила, купили. The unstressed endings show a diffuse (high) vowel u, i (rule of intensity attraction — weaker position is unstressed, so weaker vowel (diffuse).
This neatly described the Russian of Jakobson’s Moscow generation, where people said видют, учут though they wrote видят, учат. Now this is archaic and the rule is less attractive today. But still serviceable!
Looking briefly at the consonantal unsuffixed stems, we see an unproductive but important group. There are eight C’s, after the resonants j n m l r, that verbs may end with, and they are the very symmetrical group p b t d s z k g. Four voiced, four voiceless, two dental fricatives, four stops, two labial, two dental, two velar. They share an important trait: they maintain the group C(1) -C (2) at least some of the time. They are the exception that proves the rule!
Those in labials and dental plosives change those stops to s before the infinitive ending -ти. Dental stop stems lose their stop only before the past tense: в’ед– > вести вёл велА велИ. Velars lost the stop only in the infinitive (печь). Dental fricatives preserve their final consonant everywhere: несу несёшь несут, нести, нёс, несла, несло, несли, нёсший, неси.
One of my favorite C-stems is the velar žg– ‘burn’, present žgu, žžoš, žžot (жгу жжёшь жжёт), where the long жж is pronounced soft (palatalized), as it is both across morpheme boundaries and in roots, as in извозчик ‘coachman, driver’, вожжи ‘reins’, дрожжи ‘yeast’. Past tense of the verb is жёг (the masculine past drops the ending l, but keeps the velar; a fill vowel is necessary so the word can be pronounced) жгла жгли жгли, infinitive (с)жечь like печь, and past passive participle (со)жжён with that beautiful palatal.
That’s all for this topic,
gmc
Russian Conjugation -- Finale
I’ve omitted quite a few details, all of which in the long run are important one way or another, but this has gone on long enough. We need a demonstration of what all this does and what its descriptive power is like.
Let’s take some of the base forms for verbs I discussed at the beginning of this discussion. The morphophemic stem p’ok is a velar stem, so it will have substitutive softening in the present endings 2nd sg to 2nd pl. The vocalic endings will have round vowels u and o, according to the rule of acuteness attraction, since the stem is itself unstressed, so that all endings bear a stress. So here is the present tense: p’okU, p’očOš, p’očOt, p’očOm, p’očOt’e, p’okUt. In Cyrillic this is пеку печёшь печёт печём печёте пекут. (The phonemic transcription will reveal the reductions in the vowels: p’iku p’ičoš.) The infinitive will be печь, as velar stems have infinitives in чь and o is not permitted between two soft or palatal consonants. The past tense will be, phonemically, p’ok, p’ikla, p’ikl’i, with end-stress everywhere, as the velar stems have, and with the masc ending l suppressed. The imperative, also stressed, will have i, causing bare softening: пеки.
This shows us that in producing the forms of the present, infinitive, and past tenses the stem category must be specified, since it spells out lexically within its entry the movement of stress and the interplay of consonants and vowels at morpheme boundaries. These interplays may be strongly conditioned by the category of the verb, namely, the type of the last C and the stress pattern.
The general rules, for example, V(1) plus V (2) > V(2), C(1) plus C(2) > C(2), apply across all stem categories. To see how widespread this is, let’s look at the verbs ending in j (spelled й, or as a soft vowel letter after a vowel). These are suffixed stems, unlike p’ok, and embrace a variety of derived stems, like спрашивать, опазывать, советовать, делать, уметь. Note that, of course, there is no jot (j) in any of these infinitives. Why? Because the j, seen as a C, is deleted before a C ending (an ending beginning in C), and so jot disappears before infinitive and past, but is maintained in the present and imperative with their V endings.
So: делаю делаешь делает делаем делаете делают. Note that to the learner the endings seem to be –ю, –ешь, –ет, еtc., which are analyzed into j-u, j-iš, etc. here. This analysis is hard to teach because the very Cyrillic spelling seems to belie it.
In Jakobson’s analysis, the endings are not ю, ешь. ет, etc., but rather u, iš, it, im it’i, ut, in phonemic transcription with reduced vowels. The phonemic spelling is crucial, because the rule of intensity attraction predicts unstressed endings will begin with a high (diffuse) vowel: u, i. And so it is. The morphophonemic base stem is d’él-aj—, showing the interior root and stem, with stem-stress througout. This predicts all of the forms of the verb. The jod is everywhere and in every case deleted before any C.
Most handbooks give the endings as the naive student sees them, and conveniently contrast them with stressed endings spelled like иду идёшь идёт идём идёте идут. The problem with jod remains, however. What was it doing in the endings of делать and then disappearing in идти? When you look at these stems in the wider context of Russian verbs, you have to concede that the jod is part of the verb stem that appears only before V, just like the n in denu, the v in živu.
In verbs like давать даЮ даёшь даёт, where the vowel of the ending bears stress (this is the so-called deep truncation before va), the vowel changes to o, as a stressed V in a hard stem (rule of acuteness attraction).
It is interesting that in Russian spelling we see e for phonemic i, and ё for phonemic o. The o developed from stressed e in Old Russian. Nonetheless Jakobson points out that the vowel of плАчешь ‘you weep’ and and that of вИдишь ‘you see’ are phonemically the same. In a more abstract analysis, you might want to derive the former from an underlying o, and the latter from an i. This, however, goes outside of Jakobson’s model, which in itself captures an important generalization.
Some more examples, to see what generalizations they conceal.
Жить живу живёшь живут, жил, жилА, жили. This is a resonant stem in v that behaves very much like jot stems, also resonants. The v is lost before the C-endings of infinitive and past. Endings of the present are stressed, and so bear the rounded vowels if not soft (rule of acuteness attraction). The morphophonemic base živ lacks a stress, so that the present endings are stressed, but in the past, there is mobile stress — only the feminine ending bears the stress, otherwise it stays on the stem.
Compare the stress of unstressed suffixed stems, where the mobility appears in the present, but the past has stressed fixed on the theme vowel. There is only one suffixed stems that has past mobility: родитьс(ся) родился, родилась 'to be born'. These may be very important verbs, e.g. l’ubi, kup’i, p’isa, poluči. Example of mobility: куплЮ кУпишь кУпит кУпим кУпите кУпят. купил, past tense купила, купили. The unstressed endings show a diffuse (high) vowel u, i (rule of intensity attraction — weaker position is unstressed, so weaker vowel (diffuse).
This neatly described the Russian of Jakobson’s Moscow generation, where people said видют, учут though they wrote видят, учат. Now this is archaic and the rule is less attractive today. But still serviceable!
Looking briefly at the consonantal unsuffixed stems, we see an unproductive but important group. There are eight C’s, after the resonants j n m l r, that verbs may end with, and they are the very symmetrical group p b t d s z k g. Four voiced, four voiceless, two dental fricatives, four stops, two labial, two dental, two velar. They share an important trait: they maintain the group C(1) -C (2) at least some of the time. They are the exception that proves the rule!
Those in labials and dental plosives change those stops to s before the infinitive ending -ти. Dental stop stems lose their stop only before the past tense: в’ед– > вести вёл велА велИ. Velars lost the stop only in the infinitive (печь). Dental fricatives preserve their final consonant everywhere: несу несёшь несут, нести, нёс, несла, несло, несли, нёсший, неси.
One of my favorite C-stems is the velar žg– ‘burn’, present žgu, žžoš, žžot (жгу жжёшь жжёт), where the long жж is pronounced soft (palatalized), as it is both across morpheme boundaries and in roots, as in извозчик ‘coachman, driver’, вожжи ‘reins’, дрожжи ‘yeast’. Past tense of the verb is жёг (the masculine past drops the ending l, but keeps the velar; a fill vowel is necessary so the word can be pronounced) жгла жгли жгли, infinitive (с)жечь like печь, and past passive participle (со)жжён with that beautiful palatal.
That’s all for this topic,
gmc
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