Is it the use of Dative vs Acc usativ e that clarifies the meaning of Учи ть?

[Kevin Moss]

There are two different verbs with the same imperfective.

Further, you would be highly unlikely to get учить чему WITHOUT a  
person attached.

This one is учить/научить кого чему, and both are usually obligatory.

Учить что is instead  учить/выучить, which in the imperfective is  
often informal learning, rather than the kind of studying one does in  
college.
This one you will never have WITHOUT an object


On Sep 21, 2010, at 12:12 PM, Alina Israeli wrote:

> Учу стихотворению while theoretically possible, not very likely due  
> to the meaning of the verb учить, to teach. It works only with  
> skills: учить читать, писать, ходить, рисовать, дышать, работать,  
> заучивать стихи, писать стихи; учить иностранному языку, танцу,  
> пению, вышиванию, стихосложению etc.
>
> "Мemorizing a poem by heart" is not a skill, cannot teach it to  
> others.
>
> AI
>
> Sep 21, 2010, в 10:11 AM, Mark Kingdom написал(а):
>
>> ...and thus, YES, it seems to be the usage of Dative vs Accusative  
>> that
>> determines meaning?
>>
>> Я учу стихотворени*ю*.  ....now has the meaning of, "I am teaching a
>> poem..." (to an unnamed person.)
>>
>> Just clarifying.  Thanks in advance!
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 5:08 PM, R. M. Cleminson  
>> <rmcleminson at post.sk>wrote:
>>
>>> A quick look at the Russian National Corpus makes it quite clear  
>>> that учить
>>> языку means to teach a language and учить язык means to learn a  
>>> language.
>>> There do not seem to be any instances of ambiguity.
>>>
>>> -
>
> Alina Israeli
> Associate Professor of Russian
> LFS, American University
> 4400 Massachusetts Ave.
> Washington DC 20016
> (202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
> aisrael at american.edu
>
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