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