Re: Russian verbal forms (was: (In)transitive verbs

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

> ot - stuk - ivat’, “to knock several times,
> insisting on each knock”
  In my Russian-Hungarian dictionary, <otstukivat'> is
translated
as 'to tick out (e.g. a message on the telegraph), to
pound out
(e.g. a letter on the typewriter)', as well as 'to
beat the
rythm/time (e.g. when listening to a melody)'
----------
Yes, looks right. The point is that the author tries
to explain in detail the signification of the form.
----------
> Russian, like German, do sometimes (e.g. “po - raz!
- exat’sja” = to
> leave, one after the other, or familiar [pejorative]
“po - na - vy - delyvat’ = to make”

I think that the latter is rather an ad hoc forming.
As far as I know
in Russian -- but surely in Slovak -- only two-level
verbal prefix
chain are "stable".
----------
My wife confirms, you can say : Chto ty ponavydelyval
? or Chto ty ponavydumyval ? as familiar forms. The
author says that such forms (3 prefixes) are seldom
used, and only in spoken language.
----------
  It's important that <po-> is polysemic. It's a
resultative
morpheme in cases like: <letet'> 'to fly (in a certain
direction)'
> <polelet'> 'to take off, to fly away'. Or sometimes,
it's
inchoative, cf. <mchat'sja> 'to rush, to tear along' >
<pomchat'sja> 'to begin to rush'.
----------
Yes, there seems to be at least 4 different meanings
for "po-" : attenuative (poportit' = to partly
damage), ingressive (podut' = to start blowing),
limitative (poguljat' = to have a little stroll),
distributive (pobrosat' = to throw one after the
other). As far as I am concerned, the attenuative and
limitative meanings look rather similar to me, while
ingressive (inchoative) and distributive seem to be
completely different senses.
----------
  Another interesting topic in Slavic verb system are
the motion
verbs. The motion vebs form determined ('to move once,
this time,
in a certain direction, with a certain aim') --
indetermined ('to
move repeatedly, customarily, always, with no specific
aim, in
various directions) pairs like determined <letet'> 'to
fly (once,
in a certain direction etc.)' ~ indetermined <letat'>
'to fly
(repeatedly, in varous directions etc.)'. If we stick
the verbal
prefix <po-> to these verbs, we get a resultative verb
in case of
determined base (see example above), but the meaning
will be
limited in case of indetermined base: <polelat'> 'to
fly for a
time'.
----------
Yes, that's why I find it so difficult to speak
Russian. To translate the general French verb "aller",
I have to think: now wait a minute, will it be by
foot, by car, by plane ? Is it determined or
undetermined ? Is it one way, or there and back, or
just dropping in briefly ? Shall I use idti, exat',
ezdit', xodit', poïti, poexat', letet', letat',
poletat', or whatever ? Usually it takes me 30 seconds
to think it over, and finally the one a choose proves
to be the wrong one.



=====
Philippe Caquant

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

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