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!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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
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