Re: Mir ist kalt -- How to analyze this sentence?
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 4:40 |
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On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 09:38:17PM -0400, MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
> In a message dated 6/19/2007 4:58:38 PM Central Daylight Time,
> laokou@COMCAST.NET writes:
>
>
> > > "Mir ist kalt"? That's German for "I feel cold", and breaks down
> > > into 1sg.DAT is cold. But what is the subject in this sentence?
> > > "Kalt", despite it's an adjective?
> >
> > If you Google search "dative structures in Germanic languages" or
> > "mir ist kalt grammatical explanation", you'll find a plethora of
> > pedantic information -- some moderately interesting, some
> > mind-numbingly dry -- on the subject. And you'll find out more on
> > Icelandic, Faroese, Old Swedish, and German than you could ever have
> > thought you might have wanted to know.
[...]
>
> Russian has this dative construction too (mne kholodno/zharko).
[...]
Russian has a lot of such dative constructions. E.g., Мне надо + infin.
(I need to), мне нравиться + subj. (I like), мне всё равно (I don't
care), мне кажется (I feel that ...), etc..
I'm sure native speakers will be able to supply a lot more examples.
T
--
Elegant or ugly code as well as fine or rude sentences have something in
common: they don't depend on the language. -- Luca De Vitis