aspect question

[FRANK MILLER]

To add to the discussion: watching and seeing  - we watch a movie, but afterwards we have seen the movie, unless you're talking about spending the afternoon or evening watching a movie,, In English we say have you seen that movie?" but  in Russian one could use either смотреть or видеть in this type of question. Students are  always amazed at how their brains make the choice - ..watching for the process, but seeing for the result, and this helps tihem understand tine difference between Я хочу посмотреть этот фильм and Я хочу смотреть этот фильм.

FM


On Feb 20, 2013, at 8:26 PM, Stephanie Briggs <sdsures at gmail.com> wrote:

> What about something like "I was watching TV when the doorbell rang." - the action (watching) that gets interrupted would be perfective. 
> 
> ~Stephanie
> 
> On 20 February 2013 22:45, Paul B. Gallagher <paulbg at pbg-translations.com> wrote:
> Tatiana Filimonova wrote:
> 
> Doesn't "watching" imply a continuing action?  Something more in line with:
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросает мяч.
> or
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросала мяч.
> or
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросила мяч.
> 
> It would depend on whether "she" was throwing the ball repeatedly, or
> just threw it once.
> 
> For me, "watch" differs essentially from "see" in that "watch" denotes conscious attention directed at the target. Often, that is associated with prolonged processes, but not necessarily: "I watched him jump off the cliff."
> 
> As a nonnative speaker of Russian, I would have been more inclined to use смотреть for Prof. Gladney's case, but I was not surprised to see видеть in the first response from a Russian. The boundary between the two Russian verbs is not precisely the same as the boundary between the two English verbs.
> 
> As to your solutions, my understanding of the English admits the first two possibilities -- the throwing could have happened once or repeatedly. Of course, it is illogical to think that the throwing could have happened before the watching. ;-) But with a different main verb:
> 
> Я узнал(а), как она бросила мяч.
> 
> it is quite possible that the throwing preceded the learning by some time. A clearer case:
> 
> Я только позавчера узнал(а), как Советский Союз распал.
> 
> If we substitute смотреть here, the listener/reader can only make sense of the sentence by assuming we were watching a recording of the event and not the live event itself:
> 
> I was just watching the fall of the Soviet Union (on TV) the other day.
> 
> -- 
> 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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 Frank J Miller
Prof. of Slavic Languages
Russian Language Coordinator
Department of Slavic Languages
Columbia University
New York, New York 10027

Phone: 212 854 8155
Fax: 212 854 5009




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