Terms "gerund" and "verbal adverb"

[Frank Y Gladney]

The 3rd person plural for the e/o and i conjugations in the conservative Russian described by Jakobson in 1948 was distinct on the surface only under accent (unaccented, it was "vidjut" and "ljubjut").  Below the surface, they differ because the the ending (/nt/) has a different effect on thematic o than on thematic i. 

Frank Y. Gladney


---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 12:45:46 -0500
>From: Alina Israeli <aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU>  
>Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Terms "gerund" and "verbal adverb"  
>To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
>
>Some changes in terminology are useful for education purposes,  
>elimination of the III declension is not: students never manage to  
>remember that there is one hard feminine declension and two soft, and  
>the second soft (formally III) is somehow totally different while the  
>hard and the first soft are a basic variation of one another. So  
>until you break it to them that this is not a variety but a different  
>declension you do not get the proper instrumental с любовью,  
>общественностью and the like.
>
>As for modifiers vs. pronouns, I don't think Russians with a filfak  
>education should at all object: one is part of speech (части речи)  
>(noun, verb, pronoun), the other is part of a sentence (члены  
>предложения) (subject, predicate, modifier, which is определение in  
>Russian).
>
>Whether to call it I and II conjugation or by thematic vowel — that  
>is more or less six of one or half a dozen of the other, whatever one  
>prefers, as long as they don't forget that the 3 person plural forms  
>are distinctly different.
>
>On Feb 6, 2008, at 8:55 AM, 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.
>>
>>
>
>Alina Israeli
>LFS, American University
>4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
>Washington DC. 20016
>(202) 885-2387 	
>fax (202) 885-1076
>aisrael at american.edu
>
>
>
>
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