# работать



## Konstantinos

В. Путин: Что касается наших экономических взаимоотношений, Россия остаётся самым крупным инвестором в белорусскую экономику. Только один из проектов – это атомная электростанция: 10 миллиардов в долларовом эквиваленте это стоит. В целом свыше 50 процентов внешнеторгового оборота Белоруссии приходятся именно на Российскую Федерацию. В Белоруссии работает почти 2,5 тысячи предприятий с российским капиталом. У нас очень устойчивая и глубокая кооперация по целому ряду направлений и в целом ряде отраслей.

This is from a Vladimir Putin - Alexander Lukashenko speech (14 сентября 2020 года), kremlin.ru

About this part:

В Белоруссии работает почти 2,5 тысячи предприятий с российским капиталом.

I suppose работать means to function or to be open, not to work. Or what does it exactly mean?

And what is the subject of работает here?


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## Awwal12

Konstantinos said:


> I suppose работать means to function or to be open, not to work.


Maybe I'm missing something, but what would be the difference when enterprises are concerned?



Konstantinos said:


> And what is the subject of работает here?


"2,5 тысячи предприятий (с российским капиталом)", headed by "2,5 тысячи" ("две с половиной тысячи"), postpositioned as a rheme.  "Работает" and "работают" are essentially interchangeable here, but the former sounds more generalizing and the latter more individualizing.


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## Kalaus

Konstantinos said:


> I suppose работать means to function or to be open, not to work. Or what does it exactly mean?


You're right, "работать" here means function or operate.


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## Rosett

Konstantinos said:


> I suppose работать means to function or to be open, not to work. Or what does it exactly mean?


«Работать» has 12 distinctive meanings:

*<...>*

11) Действовать, функционировать; быть открытым (об организациях, учреждениях и т. п.).
Дежурная аптека работает до десяти часов вечера.

*<...>*
*Mod.: Off-topic part of the post deleted.*



Konstantinos said:


> В Белоруссии работает почти 2,5 тысячи предприятий с российским капиталом.


“Almost 2,500 enterprises with Russian equity work in Belorussia.”


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## Konstantinos

Thank you all for your answers. So тысячи is genitive singular, not nominative plural. Am I right?

Something like that:

1 тысяча
2 тысячи
3 тысячи
4 тысячи
5 тысяч
6 тысяч
7 тысяч
...

Do I remember correctly?


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## Awwal12

Konstantinos said:


> So тысячи is genitive singular, not nominative plural.


Yes. In compound numerals it generally behaves like a usual noun dependent.


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## pimlicodude

Kalaus said:


> You're right, "работать" here means function or operate.


Yes, "operate" is the most natural translation here.


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## Rosett

Konstantinos said:


> So тысячи is genitive singular, not nominative plural. Am I right?
> 
> Something like that:
> 
> 1 тысяча
> 2 тысячи
> 3 тысячи
> 4 тысячи
> 5 тысяч


Not exactly. Exceptionally, with the numerals 2, 3, and 4, we still use Dual (not Singular, not Plural) grammatical number, that declines in modern Russian as a whole, according to the following paradigm (with respect to gender in case of numeral 2, as well):
Две тысячи - Nominative Dual (feminine.)
Двух тысяч - Genitive Dual
Двум тысячам - Dative Dual
Две тысячи - Accusative Dual
Двумя тысячами - Instrumental Dual
(О/в/на) двух тысячах - Prepositional Dual


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## pimlicodude

Rosett said:


> Not exactly. Exceptionally, with the numerals 2, 3, and 4, we still use Dual (not Singular, not Plural) grammatical number, that declines in modern Russian as a whole, according to the following paradigm (with respect to gender in case of numeral 2, as well):
> Две тысячи - Nominative Dual (feminine.)
> Двух тысяч - Genitive Dual
> Двум тысячам - Dative Dual
> Две тысячи - Accusative Dual
> Двумя тысячами - Instrumental Dual
> (О/в/на) двух тысячах - Prepositional Dual


I don't know why Russians insist on an illogical presentation of the case system. Many English people have studied Latin, where the case order is presented as: Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative.

The very point of the case system is that it is a "declension" - the cases "decline", which means they "fall away from" the nominative. In other words, the meanings get ever more oblique. The accusative is not an oblique case. It is the most similar to the nominative, both in terms of morphology and in terms of syntax, as the other cases get ever more relational. The correct presentation of the cases (in English textbooks of Russian) is: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Instrumental, Prepositional. If you tuck the accusative down near the bottom of the declension table, arguably you don't understand what declension is at all.


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## Maroseika

pimlicodude said:


> The correct presentation of the cases (in English textbooks of Russian) is: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Instrumental, Prepositional. If you tuck the accusative down near the bottom of the declension table, arguably you don't understand what declension is at all.


Does it presume that Dative is "more oblique" than Genitive?


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## pimlicodude

Maroseika said:


> Does it presume that Dative is "more oblique" than Genitive?


Yes, I think so - because dative involves a relationship to something or someone else. But maybe the Russians put the accusative elsewhere because there are accusatives like голову that have a stress pattern different from the nominative? The Czechs call the vocative *pátý pád* пятый падеж, and bury it deep within the declensional paradigm, even though you would expect it to come straight after the nominative.


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## pimlicodude

This is from the Comprehensive Russian Grammar by Terence Wade, one of the most widely used grammar books in England (and it can be previewed on books google com). Maybe it could be argued that English books should actually get students accustomed to the order used in Russian grammars instead.


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## Awwal12

Rosett said:


> Not exactly. Exceptionally, with the numerals 2, 3, and 4, we still use Dual


There is no dual number in modern Russian (let alone "we use dual with the numeral 4" is just an oxymoron). There are what can be called paucal counting forms of nouns, which almost universally coincide with genitive singular forms (though in a small number of cases there are differences in stress, e.g. два часа́ vs. ни одного ча́са). Their usage per se etymologically originates in the nominative dual forms of old o-stem nouns, but since then it was pretty thoroughly levelled to fit genitive singular forms everywhere, and in the same time spread to the numbers 3 and 4 (because 1, 2, 3 and 4 were the only elementary cardinal numerals that had been originally attributives, so 5-10 were taking genitive plural dependent arguments  from the start). Just compare Old Russian and modern Russian constructions with the numeral 2 (Old Russian genitive singular forms are also given for a comparison):
дъва вълка (gen.sg. вълка) - два волка
дъва сыны (gen.sg. сыноу) - два сына (o- and u-stems started to merge already in Old Russian, so genitive singular сына is also  attested)
дъвѣ роуцѣ (gen.sg. роукы) - две руки
дъвѣ ночи (gen.sg. ночи) - две ночи
дъва мори (gen.sg. моря) - два моря
It's easy to see that while for masculine o-stem and for i-stem nouns nominative dual and genitive singular forms coincided from the start (which exactly caused the analogy), for other paradigms they didn't, so in a good deal of cases modern paucal counting forms don't come from the orifinal nominative dual forms even etymologically.


Rosett said:


> Двух тысяч - Genitive Dual
> Двум тысячам - Dative Dual
> Две тысячи - Accusative Dual
> Двумя тысячами - Instrumental Dual
> (О/в/на) двух тысячах - Prepositional Dual


And that part just makes no sense whatsoever, I'm afraid, because oblique forms are simply plural. You could compare it to how it worked in Old Russian:
Двух тысяч - дъвою тысячоу
Двум тысячам - дъвѣма тысячама
Две тысячи (acc.) - дъвѣ тысячи (coincides with nominative as expected)
Двумя тысячами -  дъвѣма тысячама
(О/в/на) двух тысячах - (о/в/на) дъвою тысячоу

Overall introducing a whole new grammatical number to explain just several irregular forms which occur *exclusively* in counting and calling it "dual" to the top of it while it has virtually nothing to do with duality (let alone the fact that the speakers themselves do *not* analyze it as some special number) is far beyond a scientific approach.


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## MIDAV

pimlicodude said:


> I don't know why Russians insist on an illogical presentation of the case system. Many English people have studied Latin, where the case order is presented as: Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative.


Good point, I never thought about it that way. In fact, I never thought there was any logic in the order of the cases in all those grammar tables. Also, I never saw the cases presented in any other way, both Latin and Russian.

Now that you mentioned it, I checked the Wikipedia page for Latin conjugation and it seems that every language except English and French has the Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Abl, Voc case order, which is very similar to Russian.

Also, consider these modern European languages (native sources):
German Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc
Polish Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Ins, Loc, Voc

I don't know exactly where our case order comes from but if I had to guess, I would say we borrowed it from Greek or Latin, which makes it as logical as it gets.


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## nizzebro

To me, the genitive is more "significant" in general, just because it is a function of static attributive relations. It is associated with nouns, while the accusative is a matter of verbs only.
The idea of grammatical cases itself is just a formal generalization, and the idea of verb arguments as some fundamental basis of grammar is only a modern view (which, I believe, is narrow and misleading).


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## Vovan

> The traditional case order *(nom-gen-dat-acc)* was expressed for the first time in _The Art of Grammar_ in the 2nd century BC. <...> Latin grammars, such as _Ars grammatica_, followed the Greek tradition, but added the ablative case of Latin. Later other European languages also followed that Greco-Roman tradition. However, for some languages, such as Latin, due to case syncretism the order may be changed for convenience, where the accusative or the vocative cases are placed after the nominative and before the genitive.
> _(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#Case_order)_


Here's a link to the relevant page of the original Greek work by Dionysius Thrax: https://archive.org/details/grammarofdionysi00dionuoft/page/10/mode/1up. But don't expect to find in it a clear justification for the case order! Also, be sure to read the remark under the asterisk.


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## pimlicodude

Vovan said:


> Here's a link to the relevant page of the original Greek work by Dionysius Thrax: https://archive.org/details/grammarofdionysi00dionuoft/page/10/mode/1up. But don't expect to find in it a clear justification for the case order! Also, be sure to read the remark under the asterisk.


Thank you. Some weird case names there. I think it will be the modern translator of Dionysius Thrax who wanted the genitive to be called the generic? But I see where it all comes from. The English tradition violates the common European approach, probably to make it easier for the cases to be learnt by heart. Kennedy's Latin Primer, the most famous textbook of Latin, has the order NVAccGDAbl. "Case syncretism" probably means grouping together some cases that are generally morphologically identical.

The Russian version of the Wikipedia page you found says:


> Современная лингвистическая типология опирается на представление о том, что падежи представляют собой упорядоченную систему, иерархию, в которой каждому падежу присваивается определённый ранг:
> 
> 
> Номинатив → Аккузатив или Эргатив → Генитив → Датив → Локатив → Аблатив → Инструменталис → Вокатив → другие падежи


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