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<TITLE>Re: Crackers</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Czech, yet another European language, goes with German in that the verbs PRASKNOUT / PRASKAT “to crack” (and also PUKNOUT / PUKAT, perhaps more like “to burst”), or their aktionsart derivations, do not allow transitive uses:<BR>
<BR>
<I>Váza byla prasklá / puklá.<BR>
</I>"The vase was cracked."<BR>
<BR>
<I>Váza měla prasklinu / puklinu.<BR>
</I>"The vase had a crack."<BR>
<BR>
<I>Váza praskla / pukla.<BR>
</I>“The vase cracked.”<BR>
<BR>
*<I>Otec prasknul / puknul vázu.<BR>
</I>“Father cracked the vase.”<BR>
<BR>
Like in German, there is no more or less direct way of expressing the causation here. <BR>
<BR>
There is, however, the transitive verb LOUSKAT that translates English “crack” in “crack a nut”, and the (etymologically) related transitive verb LUŠTIT that translates English “crack” in “crack a code”.<BR>
<BR>
Viktor Elšík (Elsik)<BR>
<BR>
On 6/24/08 1:15 PM, "Frans Plank" <Frans.Plank@UNI-KONSTANZ.DE> wrote:<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> Crackers<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> Consider the following relationship between a state, a change of state, and <BR>
> the causation of a change of state.<BR>
> <BR>
> STATE<BR>
> X was in a state of not being whole, being partially fractured though without <BR>
> the parts completely separate or without the whole completely destroyed<BR>
> (where X is something, preferably an artefact, of brittle consistency, hard <BR>
> but breakable, such as vases or window panes made of glass, plates made of <BR>
> porcelain, earthenware, urns or tablets made of clay, walls made from dried <BR>
> cow-dung, etc.)<BR>
> <BR>
> CHANGE OF STATE<BR>
> X spontaneously, or at any rate without an animate agent acknowledged as <BR>
> causally involved, changed from a state of being whole to a state of not being <BR>
> whole, being partially fractured though without the parts completely separate <BR>
> or without the whole completely destroyed<BR>
> <BR>
> CAUSATION<BR>
> An animate agent caused a change of state of A from being whole to not being <BR>
> whole, being partially fractured though without the parts completely separate <BR>
> or without the whole completely destroyed<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> To exemplify this trias from English.<BR>
> <BR>
> STATE<BR>
> The vase had a crack. (transitive verb of possession,<BR>
> with [deverbal???] noun as object) <BR>
> The vase was cracked. (existential copula,<BR>
> stative-resultative participle of [intransitive, <BR>
> denominal???] verb)<BR>
> <BR>
> CHANGE OF STATE<BR>
> The vase cracked. (same verb as for causation, used <BR>
> intransitively)<BR>
> <BR>
> CAUSATION<BR>
> Father cracked the vase. (same verb as for change of state, used <BR>
> transitively)<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> And here's closely related German.<BR>
> <BR>
> STATE<BR>
> Die Vase hatte einen Sprung. (transitive verb of possession,<BR>
> with deverbal noun as object)<BR>
> Die Vase war gesprungen. (existential copula,<BR>
> stative-resultative participle of [intransitive] <BR>
> verb)<BR>
> <BR>
> CHANGE OF STATE<BR>
> Die Vase sprang. (intransitive verb, a verb of movement,<BR>
> literally designating a sudden spring from the <BR>
> ground)<BR>
> Die Vase bekam einen Sprung. (inchoative verb, lit. 'to get',<BR>
> with deverbal noun as object)<BR>
> <BR>
> CAUSATION<BR>
> --- <BR>
> <BR>
> Remarkably, though a native speaker, I find no way of expressing this <BR>
> straightforward state of affairs in German, other than in extremely roundabout <BR>
> ways ('Father was careless and did something to the vase that resulted in its <BR>
> having a crack', or such). Neither the denominal noun Sprung nor some <BR>
> morphological or syntactic way of causativising the verb springen works (there <BR>
> is an old causative, sprengen, but that now means 'cause to burst with a loud <BR>
> nose, explode'):<BR>
> *Vater brachte der Vase einen Sprung bei.<BR>
> *Vater sprang die Vase. *Vater ließ die Vase springen.<BR>
> The prefixal derivative zer-springen (with zer- a completive-destructive <BR>
> prefix) again is only intransitive and means 'to go to pieces'; and <BR>
> transitive zer-sprengen likewise means 'break up completely'.<BR>
> At long last my question:<BR>
> <BR>
> Is this gap in German unique? Preliminary enquiries -- though of very limited <BR>
> crosslinguistic range -- suggest it is not. Is it easy or difficult or <BR>
> impossible to express the concept 'to cause something to be cracked' in the <BR>
> language(s) that you speak or know well?<BR>
> I find this gap somewhat worrying, from a practical as well as a theoretical <BR>
> point of view. I'd assume that brittle things frequently end up being cracked, <BR>
> in German-speaking lands no less than in English-speaking ones, and that <BR>
> spontaneous crackings (ice comes to mind here, as temperature rises) worldwide <BR>
> are overall far less frequent than cracks caused by the carelessness of human <BR>
> agents. (If there is a difficulty with 'to cause something to be cracked', it <BR>
> might therefore be to do with the semantics of transitivity rather than with <BR>
> frequency, a notion often invoked to account for the differential ease of <BR>
> expressibility of anything thinkable and sayable and in particular for the <BR>
> directionality of derivations of causatives or decausatives.)<BR>
> <BR>
> I'd appreciate any feedback.<BR>
> <BR>
> (And I'd like to gratefully acknowledge the unwitting input from Alex Tantos, <BR>
> discussing English crack at his thesis defence yesterday, if from the angle of <BR>
> Discourse Representation Theory and how it accounts for causation -- a really <BR>
> hard nut to crack.)<BR>
> <BR>
> frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
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