Bulgarian "deeprichastie"

[Jouko Lindstedt]

On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Milena Slavcheva wrote:

>         Can someone tell me a good English name for the Bulgarian
> "deeprichastie"?
> Some people use "gerund", but I think it is not correct to take the name of
> a specific English phenomenon which is said not to exist in Bulgarian.
>
> Milena Slavcheva

"Gerund" is not a specifically English term, it comes from Latin grammar
(no doubt as a loan translation from Greek, though I cannot check that
for the moment). In every language where it is used it of course assumes
a specific meaning; but the English one is in no way better than any
other. If the cross-linguistic meaning of "gerund" is "an adverb-like form
of the verb", the Bulgarian "deeprichastie" is in fact more of a gerund
than the English ing-form!

Jouko Lindstedt
Slavonic and Baltic Department, University of Helsinki
e-mail: Jouko.Lindstedt at Helsinki.Fi or jslindst at cc.helsinki.fi
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jslindst/