Re: Grammar - Can

Roger Mills wrote:


> Your questions are justified.
I'm glad I haven't said anything too stupid. Some phrases there indeed sound
odd both to my non-native ear and my 29 years of learning/using English.

> Perhaps the problem has to do with "run" as a verb of motion,
> implying dynamic/ongoing action, as opposed to "the dog sat/died" where we
> don't have the same ambiguity.
Exactly. I wonder if it means an accomplished action or a process. In many
langs it would demand different verb forms (or even different verbs)!

> Is the same sentence in Russian equally indistinct?
The sentence cannot be translated into Russian with the same ambiguity.
Russian verb may be too precise in TAM nuances. There is only one past tense
in Russian, but it produces strange effects when combined with aspect.
Possible variants:
_Sobaka ubezhala_ - perfective (ran away)
*_Sobaka bezhala_ - imperfective, sounds ungrammatical, needs some adverbial
modifiers, e.g. _sobaka bezhala po doroge_ (the dog ran down the road)
_Sobaka begala_ [notice g : zh alteration] - imperfective iterative (exists
only for verbs of motion) - (was running to and fro).

> In Spanish of course you
> have the problem of "corría" vs. "currió".
That's what I meant. I have a project in my mind that would distinguish
actions according to their accomplishment.

> "See the man!" to me is also quite odd; although many generations of
> Americans have learned reading from a similar series of books (See Spot
run!
> et al.), I've never heard, nor used, "see" as an imperative
> in such a construction. It would be "Look at...!"
> Again, how does the literal translation in Russian sound? Spanish "¡Ve/vea
> al hombre!" strikes my non-native ear as equally unlikely.
In Russian, the verb "to see" is highly improbable in imperative. The only
case I can recollect is a line from Pushkin's poem "Prophet" (a very archaic
style in this case):

Vosstan', propok, i vizhd' i vnemli... - Stand up, o prophet, see and hear!

Naturally it would be _posmotri na chto-to_ "have a look at something". Or
merely a demonstrative particle _vot_, cf. Latin _ecce_.

================

Pipian wrote:

> When faced with this dilemma, I assume the simplest meaning is the
> correct one (in the case of "See the man!", the imperative one).
I understand you, and I agree with you to some extent. The point is that it
is impossible to form imperatives from "uncontrolled" verbs in my project
(as in many natlangs).

> As for your running example, however, i guess you could always just
> write up two examples, with annotation illustrating the two different
> meanings.
Great idea!

================

Mark J. Reed wrote:

> It means simply "The dog was running".
> > Or what does the phrase "See the man!" mean? I've got at least two
variants
> > of interpretation: "Behold, here is that man!" or "Have a look at that
man!"
> As punctuated, it can only mean the latter.
Thank you for clarification. That's what I thought.
My thanks to Charlie and Tristan who commented on this topic too.

As for McGuffey as the translation exercise, I find it great. I would
comment more, but it's my fifth msg for today, and *this* topic is being
discussed in a different thread!

Cheers,
-- Yitzik

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