Re: Looking for a case: counting

I agree about accusative in 'mnogo raz' and 'kazhduyu
nedelju'. I think it was the same thing in Latin. But
once more, this is purely syntactic and dependent of
the language considered. (By the way, shouldn't *raz*
be a genitive in *mnogo raz* ? In French, there is an
incorrect expression sometimes heard, *beaucoup de
fois*. If *raz* is a genitive plural, then what are
the singular and plural nominatives for it ? Why is it
not *razov* ?).

*With a hammer* is clearly an instrumental,
syntactically (in Russian; *molotkom*, I guess ?) and
semantically (for everybody). It is more delicate to
interpret the example I once read on this list, from
an Amerindian language: to break with one's behind,
for ex by sitting on something. Can somebody's
backside be considered as an instrument ? I would do a
distinction between 'external instrument' and 'body
part used as an instrument'. Then there is yet another
possibility, when it's about method rather than
instrument (he gained something by felony = abstract
term).

But I find it hard to agree with your proposition:
"When a prepositional (or: disguised accusative)
phrase complements the predicate, it's an adverbial
concept.". Do you mean that in a sentence like *I've
been living for many years in the woods with wolves*,
'many years', 'the woods' and 'wolves' are all
adverbial concepts ??? In that case, nearly everything
could be adverbial. As to me, these are all
circumstants: 'for many years' is temporal, 'in the
woods' is local, and 'with wolves' is comitative.

By 'adverbial concepts', I mean concepts modifying the
way the verbal concept itself (the core) is conceived,
like 'slowly', 'gracefully', 'exactly',
'progressively', 'all at once', 'regularly', 'hardly',
'strongly', 'peacefully', etc. This would need further
analyse, because there are again different notions in
them, for ex modalities and aspects vs (objective and
subjective) manner. Look at Russian *On chut' ne
upal*, *He nearly felt*, French *il a failli tomber*:
this is not manner, it means that the action didn't
get realized, although it was very close to (on the
edge of being realized).

So clearly, this has all to be examined more
carefully, without any a priori, and always with the
necessary distinction between such or such natlang
syntax, and general semantics.

--- Racsko Tamas <tracsko@...> wrote:

>   Russian <mnogo raz> is not a simple noun phrase,
> but it's in
> accusative. In Slavic languages a number of temporal
> adverbial
> expressions is formed by accusative. The inflection
> is disguised in
> <mnogo raz> (it's concealed by the numeral
> agreement), but it's
> clear in constructions with female singular nouns,
> like <kazhduyu
> nedelyu> 'every week' (e.g. in "I do every week the
> same").
>
>   Therefore I think that English <many times>,
> <every week> etc.
> are also in accusative, just as <with hammer> is in
> instrumental.
> The construction is the same in both cases.
>
>   In Hungarian <many times> is expressed usually by
> multiplicative
> "case": <sok.szor> [Sok.sor] (<sok> 'many, much'
> <-szOr>
> multiplicative marker). But in elegant style, you
> can say it using
> instrumental: <sok alkalom.mal> [Sok OlkOlom:Ol]
> lit. 'with many
> occasion[s]', or using locative (inessive to be
> precise) <sok
> eset.ben> [Sok ESEtbEn] lit. 'in many instance[s]'.
>
>   By the way, as far as I know the phrase <in many
> instances> is
> also possible in the meaning 'many times' in
> English.
>
> > I don't think that 'with a hammer' is an adverbial
> concept. I never
> > thought of hitting something 'hammerly'.
>
>   I have a sample sentence from a discussion forum:
> "and then got
> out of the car and beat him manually". When you beat
> <manually>,
> you beat <with your hands> (or: <by hands>). When
> you see something
> <with your eyes>, you perceive it <visually>. When a
> prepositional
> (or: disguised accusative) phrase complements the
> predicate, it's
> an adverbial concept.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Reply