Terms "gerund" and "verbal adverb"

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Richard Robin wrote:

> ...
> Changing traditional terminology to suit our learners is nothing new. We
> used to talk about first and second conjugations. Now we talk about е/ё- and
> и-theme verbs. We don't number the declensions as Russians do, but rather
> give them descriptive names. And we refer to words like твой and этот as
> modifiers, even though not calling them pronouns produces howls of protests
> from Russians with a filfak education.

This is a matter of perspective -- like arguing whether a blue suit is 
blue or a suit. Твой and этот function grammatically as adjectives, but 
they do have deictic function as well, like pronouns. I'd go with your 
view, because "pronoun" denotes something that can replace a noun, and 
these words really can't replace nouns (except to the extent that any 
adjective can be used with an equi-deleted head NP: "Нравится мой 
вариант, а не твой [Ø]").

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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