# Tego tu nie było



## The Hyena

Cześć wszystkim,

I just heard this on a TV show set in WW2. It's a group of worried soldiers suddenly discovering an enemy parachute . . .  

"Jeszcze godzinę temu, tego tu nie było"

Why is this "tego"? I suspect it is "tu" causing some mischief.

Thanks

H


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## zaffy

The Hyena said:


> "tego"



'Tego' refers to the parachute.   _It wasn't here an hour ago._


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## The Hyena

Thanks Zaffy,

Yes, I see that, however I don't understand why "tego" is called for when the sentence is negating "byc". Is "tego" genitive because there is some accusative action that is being negated?


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## zaffy

"Mam to." changes into "Nie mam tego." when negating.

"Kupiłem to wczoraj." vs. "Nie kupiłem tego wczoraj." 

The accusative case changes into the genitive one.


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## The Hyena

zaffy said:


> "Mam to." changes into "Nie mam tego." when negating.
> 
> "Kupiłem to wczoraj." vs. "Nie kupiłem tego wczoraj."
> 
> The accusative case changes into the genitive one.


Thanks, but where was the accusative action in my sentence before it was negated? There was no verb calling for a noun in accusative before the negation, was there? Just "być" in both positive and negative. And my instinct is that nouns acted on by "być" don't flip to genitive on negation. I can see I'm missing something obvious but I can't pin it down.


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## zaffy

I'm not sure what you mean. 

Godzinę temu to było tu. vs. Godzinę temu tego nie było tu.


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## The Hyena

If the reason that "to" goes to "tego" is that:

"Godzinę temu to było tu"

has a verb calling for an noun in accusative. Where is the accusative, above, to justify "to" going to "tego", in genitive? (ie) where is the verb calling for a noun in Accusative? There is just "byc", isn't there? And nouns acted on by "byc" don't flip to genitive on negation.


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## Ben Jamin

The positive sentence does not require an accusative. You are right.
The affirmative version is "To było tu".
The negative sentence is "Tego tu nie było"
The nominative "to" gets changed to genitive "tego". The predicate "było" is retained in the past tense.
However, in present tense the change from affirmative to negative requires both the change of the declension case and a change of the verb "być" to "mieć" (to have), and intoducing a new subject of the sentence.

To jest tu -> Tego tu nie ma. 

The negative sentence apparently doesn't have a subject. The sentence can be rewritten to this theoretical version "*Coś (imaginary subject) nie ma (negative of "have") tego (of this) tu (here) (IT hasn't got this here).
This sounds complicated and overwhelming for a beginner, but if you have had any contact with the German language, then you could have noticed the expression "es gibt" (it has) in the meaning "there is". Also French has its "il y a". "Es" is the imaginary dummy subject of "have" in German.


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## The Hyena

Thanks Ben, that’s a great explanation.

H


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## Ben Jamin

The Hyena said:


> Thanks Ben, that’s a great explanation.
> 
> H


I forgot to add that in a negative sentence, the object takes the genitive case. This is a "genitivus partitivus", used in negation in some other languages (Gothic: allegedely  had it, also Slovene, old Czech, and Russian to some extent(


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