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