# само́м vs са́мом



## Lorenc

I sometimes have to think really hard about the correct stress for са́мом/само́м  (and similarly са́мого/самого́, са́мой/само́й and са́мому/самому́, but let's leave this for another discussion).
Please consider the following sentences with the са́мом/само́м dilemma:

1. «Что он вам сделал?» — и разве Джеймс не ответил ей: «Пожалуй, *всё дело в самом факте его существования*, если ты понимаешь, о чём я»?

1a. всё дело в са́мом факте его существования => the whole matter is in the very fact of his existence
1b. всё дело в само́м факте его существования => the whole matter is in the fact itself of his existence

Both English translations make kind-of sense (1a more than 1b).

2. Ее первая тюремщица умерла, однако жалкое положение Арианы Думбльдор не улучшилось. *О самом ее существовании мало кто знал*, и все посвященные, подобно «Песьему Смраду» Дожу, верили сказкам о слабом здоровье девочки.

2a. О са́мом ее существовании мало кто знал => Few knew about her very existence
2b. О само́м ее существовании мало кто знал => Few knew about her existence itself

Like in case 1., both translations make kind-of sense to me, 2a more than 2b.

3. Его горящий взгляд скользнул от Рона, лежавшего на кровати, к Гермионе, прижавшейся к стене, от неё — к Гарри, который замер с палочкой над Блэком, *и остановился на самом Блэке*, поверженном и окровавленном у ног Гарри.

3a. и остановился на са́мом Блэке => and stopped right over Black
3b. и остановился на само́м Блэке => and stopped over Black himself

Same as 1. and 2.: it seems to me that 3a makes more sense but I'm not too sure.


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## Awwal12

The words are partly overlapping, mind you. Самый has a rather restricted usage, however. Most typically it is the superlative marker (+ adj.) or, similarly, points out that the head noun is as characteristic as it gets: в са́мом центре (in the centermost part), самая чаща (the thickest part of the forest) etc. The simple emphatic meaning, on the other hand, is rather formal and brings up philosophical discourse to mind; it also tends to be used in a contrastive fashion (like the English "_even_ N itself"). So 1a is rather unlikely (though formally possible too).

However, 2a is what I'd actually suppose by default, since 2b sounds strange. The reason is that, apparently, сам is pretty sensitive to the sentence's pragmatic structure and its place in it. I am afraid I cannot formalize it more precisely at the moment; analyzing communicative structures of Russian sentences may be pretty mind-boggling.

3a is really off here, as there's nothing even to contrast Black with, while 3b is entirely applicable.


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## nizzebro

Speaking of the stress, I would use b's in each case (3b is not arguable).
As for the distinction between 'the very' and 'itself', you use either  'именно', or, turn the object into a topic, or else, depending on a sentence:

...всё дело в самом факте его существования... (the very fact of his existence)
...всё дело именно в факте его существования... (the fact of his existence itself)

...о само́м её существовании мало кто знал... (the very her existence)
...о существовании же её мало кто знал... (her existence itself) - or, '...а самом же её существовании...'

...и остановился прямо на Блэке  (right over Black)
...и остановился на само́м Блэке   (Black himself)


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> ...о само́м её существовании мало кто знал... (the very her existence)
> ...о существовании же её мало кто знал... (her existence itself) - or, '...а самом же её существовании...'


Actually, both sound off to me (plus you have some sort of typo in the second sentence). Thing is, "существование" looks treated as old information here, which I find somehow problematic. The sentence can be fixed, for example, by using "даже" (likely because it could validate the fronting for emphasis).


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> Thing is, "существование" looks treated as old information here, which I find somehow problematic.


I don't quite understand. I mean fronting of a kind like 'speaking of her existence,...' which is to me the only criterion for being 'topic' or 'theme'.  Another thing is that 'itself' is itself somewhat odd in regard to existence (which would be an alternative?) so I agree with 'даже' - but only regarding 'the very' option. I'm not sure what Lorenc meant by 2b because any switching to her existence would create the same emphasis there.


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## Awwal12

Just something to clear up - do you imply that the beginning of your two sentences is stressed intonationally?


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## nizzebro

Sorry for the delay, no, I don't think so, I left the accent just as related to the syllable but now I see it is misleading.


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## Vovan

nizzebro said:


> Speaking of the stress, I would use b's in each case


I subscribe to that. 

_________

*Lorenc*, more about idiomatic uses of "самый" can be found here: https://classes.ru/all-russian/dictionary-russian-academ-term-71614.htm A few of them may strike a modern speaker as quaint, though.


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> Sorry for the delay, no, I don't think so, I left the accent just as related to the syllable but now I see it is misleading.


I'm sorry, but I cannot get rid of the impression that the unstressed "о само́м её существовании" is treated as old information, and it does sound off to me in the context (because that topic apparently wasn't introduced before). "О са́мом её существовании" would be automatically emphatic (and intonationally stressed) and thus fine by me.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> I'm sorry, but I cannot get rid of the impression that the unstressed "о само́м её существовании" is treated as old information, and it does sound off to me in the context (because that topic apparently wasn't introduced before). "О са́мом её существовании" would be automatically emphatic (and intonationally stressed) and thus fine by me.


I agree that there is a problem with context, as well as with existence -  I just cannot think of it combined with 'itself'.
In principle, I think that your 'о са́мом' used here (considering the stress) is basically a sample of a better language. I just used the most expected one (as it seems to me) - I generally stick to such if there's no clear ambiguity with that.


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## Lorenc

Thanks a lot. BTW, if in some sentence the choice сам/самый is even a little bit ambiguous even to you, the Gods of Russian language, that's good enough for me and I'll just disregard these rare corner cases!

Could you please also give me your opinion on the following?

4. к несчастью, его словам несколько противоречил вид *этой са́мой/само́й команды* – они тесной кучкой сидели в дальнем углу, шептались и бросали на Рона явно неприязненные взгляды.

"the appearance of that very team" / "the appearance of that team itself"
It'd choose *са́мой*

5. Глядя на океан, он чувствовал, что как никогда близко подошёл *к са́мой/само́й сути происходящего*.

"to the very essence of what was going on" / "to the essence itself of what was going on"
It'd choose *са́мой*


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## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> 4. к несчастью, его словам несколько противоречил вид *этой са́мой/само́й команды* – они тесной кучкой сидели в дальнем углу, шептались и бросали на Рона явно неприязненные взгляды.
> 
> "the appearance of that very team" / "the appearance of that team itself"
> It'd choose *са́мой*


"Этот самый" ("эта самая", "эти самые" etc., also "тот самый" etc.) is basically a fixed expression (~that/this very). *Этот сам is simply impossible (because the word order would be reversed - сам always precedes demonstrative pronouns in a noun phrase, not follows them).


Lorenc said:


> 5. Глядя на океан, он чувствовал, что как никогда близко подошёл *к са́мой/само́й сути происходящего*.


I'd suppose "самая суть" here ("the very essence"). That's generally in line with the quantifying "самый центр", "самая чаща" etc.
Also I was a bit imprecise above:


Awwal12 said:


> points out that the head noun is as characteristic as it gets


I'd rather say that when the head noun contains some _quantitative attribute_ in its full lexical definition, it means the maximal degree of that attribute. English "the very" may function in a pretty similar manner.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> I'd rather say that when the head noun contains some _quantitative attribute_ in its full lexical definition, it means the maximal degree of that attribute. English "the very" may function in a pretty similar manner.


I think 'самый центр' which you provided before looks as a conceptual prototype, as it works only where one of the pair of notions (e.g. происходящее) can be represented as a range of some quality (here, significance).


Lorenc said:


> 4. к несчастью, его словам несколько противоречил вид *этой са́мой/само́й команды* – они тесной кучкой сидели в дальнем углу, шептались и бросали на Рона явно неприязненные взгляды.


Either *этой са́мой команды - * 'that (very) team' or *само́й (этой) команды - *the(this) team itself.

Note that *этой са́мой *adds some modality as we use 'this' not in the direct deitic sense; it could be sarcasm when you might add quotes to it like ..."team" or like that. I'm not sure if the English phrase works similar. On the other hand, 'той са́мой' works only if the team is not seen, or, the implied sense is 'that discussed before'; if you need just  restriction, you say 'этой именно'.


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> On the other hand, 'той са́мой' works only if the team is not seen


That's expected, as, unlike in English, the Russian distal deictics are marked and the proximal are the default ones (in English it's the other way around).


nizzebro said:


> I think 'самый центр' which you provided before looks as a conceptual prototype, as it works only where one of the pair of notions (e.g. происходящее) can be represented as a range of some quality (here, significance).


I don't quite follow, I am afraid. Центр is, by definition, not only a geometrical point (where little can actually happen) but also an area, which necessarily incorporates distances. On the other hand, sentences like *он был самый полицейский or *я сидел за самым столом sound frankly absurd (though in some wider context the emphatic meaning of самый would be potentially possible in the second sentence).


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> which necessarily incorporates distances. On the other hand, sentences like *он был самый полицейский or *я сидел за самым столом sound frankly absurd (though in some wider context the emphatic meaning of самый would be potentially possible in the second sentence)


Well, the keyword in my post  is 'range'.  Policemen and tables cannot be such. And, the next factor is that once you have a range that is not a connection between two notions, but only related to a _single _quality, it becomes looking mentally as something concentric (as otherwise, additional notions would add additional polarity like directions, 'lefts' and 'rights'...), but we deal with a single attribute.


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## nizzebro

P.S. Actually, one could say 'тяните  этот провод до са́мого стола'  - so tables as well can be 'that very thing'. (And, while pragmatically that table is an idea of extreme point ,  this linearity is set by an additional semantics (тяните до)).


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> P.S. Actually, one could say 'тяните этот провод до са́мого стола' - so tables as well can be 'that very thing'.


That looks like the case of asymmetry between syntax and semantics, though. While sintactically самый seems to modify стол, semantically it rather modifies the head preposition до (cf. the roughly equivalent "all the way to the table"), which makes it an isolated situation.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> looks like the case of asymmetry between syntax and semantics


I would say that it is a semantic issue. We cannot use 'са́мый стол' as a subject only because стол is not mentioned as a part of some other entity - unlike 'центр', 'край' or 'суть'.  And, that 'тяните до' creates such partial meaning as it actually says 'до самой крайней точки, которой является стол'.


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## Lorenc

Awwal12 said:


> "Этот самый" ("эта самая", "эти самые" etc., also "тот самый" etc.) is basically a fixed expression (~that/this very). *Этот сам is simply impossible (because the word order would be reversed - сам always precedes demonstrative pronouns in a noun phrase, not follows them).



With regards to your comment above, could you please confirm the correct wordstress in the following sentence? (a passage from Tolstoy)

6. – Ничего не было дурного или неуместного в том, что они говорили, всё было остроумно и могло бы быть смешно; *но чего-то того самого,* что составляет соль веселья, не только не было, но они и не знали, что оно бывает.

I suppose it must be *того́ са́мого*, although the sequence in bold sounds strange to me; I parse it by mentally adding a dash (or at least a comma) after чего-то, so that it reads: но чего-то *-- *того самого, что составляет соль веселья -- не только не было,...


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## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> I suppose it must be *того́ са́мого*


True.


Lorenc said:


> although the sequence in bold sounds strange to me


It sounds not too elegant to me, to be frank, but it's definitely grammatical.
То самое is essentially an attributive phrase (potentially substantivated - like in this case: ~"that very thing"), so it still can be attached to чего-то (cf. Eng. "something ADJ"). And it surely can be modified by a relative clause in the same time.


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## Lorenc

Two more sentences I'm not sure about:
5. Он собрал все свои силы, чтобы пошевелиться и произвести какой-нибудь звук. Он слабо пошевелил ногою и произвел* самого его* разжалобивший, слабый, болезненный стон.

I think it's *самого́ его́*, and I understand the second sentence as follows:
He feebly moved his leg and made a weak, painful groan, a groan that had caused *he himself* to be moved to pity [I didn't find a better literal translation without this long circumlocution].

6. Француз доказывал, смешивая австрийцев с русскими, что русские сдались и бежали *от самого Ульма*;
I think it's *от самого́ Ульма* (from Ulm itself) but I'm not too sure.


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## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> 5. Он собрал все свои силы, чтобы пошевелиться и произвести какой-нибудь звук. Он слабо пошевелил ногою и произвел* самого его* разжалобивший, слабый, болезненный стон.


"Самый он" is impossible anyway.
Here "самого́ его́" ~ "его́ самого́".
Please also note predicative "он самый" (when responding to a question, or attached to "это") - "(it is) him/it/me", "no one/nothing else (than him/it/me)"; "in the flesh".


Lorenc said:


> 6. Француз доказывал, смешивая австрийцев с русскими, что русские сдались и бежали *от самого Ульма*;
> I think it's *от самого́ Ульма* (from Ulm itself) but I'm not too sure.


Nope. We've already discussed the usage of "самый" in spatial constructions, and that's just one more example.
от са́мого Ульма - ~all the way from Ulm (Ulm is far away and it's the starting point)
у са́мой грани́цы - ~just near the border/right at the border (it cannot be closer to the border)
etc.


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## Lorenc

Awwal12 said:


> Nope. We've already discussed the usage of "самый" in spatial constructions, and that's just one more example.



I may be as thick as two short planks, but can you please confirm or reject the following sentences?

1. Сегодня я получил письмо из *са́мого Министерства *иностранных дел России. 
all the way from the ministry (considered as a place)

2. Сегодня я получил письмо от *самого́ министра *иностранных дел России.
from the minister himself ("in flesh and blood")

3. Сегодня я получил письмо от *самого́ Министерства *иностранных дел России. 
??? from the ministry itself (considered as a personified entity) ???


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## Awwal12

Lorenc said:


> Сегодня я получил письмо из *са́мого Министерства *иностранных дел России.
> all the way from the ministry (considered as a place)


I'm afraid it cannot work as a place in your sentence. "Из са́мого + N" doesn't seem to work very well in general (at least in the spatial sense) to me, but at least it must be an original point of some movement - expressed by an actual motion verb. So I'd just stick with "самого́" here.





Lorenc said:


> Сегодня я получил письмо от *самого́ министра *иностранных дел России.
> from the minister himself ("in flesh and blood")


Yes, that's pretty standard "himself".


Lorenc said:


> Сегодня я получил письмо от *самого́ Министерства *иностранных дел России.
> ??? from the ministry itself (considered as a personified entity) ???


Doesn't sound really well to me, but basically possible. "Из (самого́) министерства" would be more expected, though.


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## nizzebro

Lorenc said:


> 1. Сегодня я получил письмо из *са́мого Министерства *иностранных дел России.
> all the way from the ministry (considered as a place)


This sentence could have e.g. the following funny and crazy meaning: assume there are foreign affairs of Russia, as such, as some area; and, assume the term 'ministry' means not a facility but 'the top' or 'the center' in regard to these affairs - so the letter they received would be then from that very 'top' or 'center' of these affairs - think of a normal sentence like:

Сегодня я получил письмо из самого сердца нашей Родины: Москвы.

But neither 'Министерство' nor 'МИД России' is 'the heart' or 'the top' or  'the center' or 'extreme point' or any other conceptual part in regard to other entity which we could attach using the genitive case like 'нашей Родины'.

But, saying "из самого́ Министерства' one selects ministry as not a part of something but a self-sufficient thing (which 'сам' means essentially) - either in the sense as  'not something only related to it, but the ministry itself' or as 'it was the Ministry, man, not just any...'.


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## Lorenc

Two more sentences with с*а*мого/самог*о*
1. Из *самого* *озера* по разломам вода проникает куда-то
2. Когда Чарли является в фильме "Огни рампы" без своей привычной маски, под "маской" *самого незагримированного Чаплина*, пьяный и охладевший к окружающему человечеству, но по первому же сигналу сразу приступает к делу спасения ближнего, его образ проступает сквозь обличье нового персонажа.

For 1, considering


Awwal12 said:


> "Из са́мого + N" doesn't seem to work very well in general (at least in the spatial sense) to me, but at least it must be an original point of some movement - expressed by an actual motion verb.


it must be самог*о*, but I'd like confirmation.

For 2. I'd again choose самог*о* ('under the mask of Chaplin himself, without any make up'), but I could possibly interpret it as the superlative of незагримированного ('under the mask of the supremely unadorned Chaplin' or something like that).


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## Vovan

I agree with your choice, *Lorenc*. Moreover, we Russians, too, may take "самого незагримированного" in your second example as the superlative during the first reading.

As for "самого́" and "са́мого", it's the first that's more frequent in general ("itself", "himself"), as has become clearer during the discussion. Leaving aside the case of the superlative, "са́мого" is essentially used for emphasis and can often be left out without serious consequences for the message. Functionally it's similar to the English "the very", "as early as" and similar phrases. However, "самого́" can also be emphatic (e.g. in the meaning "no one else but"), so phrases like "Я получил письмо от самого́ Дмитрия" are potentially ambiguous.


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## Lorenc

One more sentence:
Гравитационные волны, почти не поглощаясь, проходят сквозь толщу времён и плотностей, *приходят к нам с самого сотворения мира.

с самого сотворения мира *'all the way from the creation of the world'
*с самого́ сотворения мира *'from the creation itself of the world'

I'd perhaps choose the second version with *самого́*, although I also see strong similarities with expressions such as с самого́ рождения/начала/утра/детства. Do Russians ever hesitate in such (or other) cases?


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## nizzebro

Lorenc said:


> I'd perhaps choose the second version with *самого́*, although I also see strong similarities with expressions such as с самого́ рождения/начала/утра/детства. Do Russians ever hesitate in such (or other) cases?



c *са́мого *сотворения мира рождения/начала/утра/детства

because we talk about a characteristic feature (time of beginning -> the earliest time point). Otherwise it would be 'itself' - са́мого, and I cannot see any reason for that.

Russians do not hesitate. They can probably shift the stress sometimes with сотворения мира or like, but not with set collocations as c *са́мого утра *(except that in fast speech you cannot detect the stress).




Из *самого* *озера* по разломам вода проникает куда-то

This sentence is a bit clumsy itself. In any case, Из *самого* *озера *here should be a new information in regard to everything else, but, it goes as a topic here, being followed by descriptive senses 'по разломам, куда-то'.


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## Lorenc

nizzebro said:


> c *са́мого *сотворения мира рождения/начала/утра/детства



Yes, thanks (I meant to write с са́мого рождения/начала/утра/детства in my original post, although I stupidly and confusingly used the opposite stress -- I've got to be more careful).
One more doubt in my infinite list:
Ну да… Но от Пугачева и декабристов… *до самого Ленина…* все мечтали о равенстве и братстве.

*до самого́ Ленина? *


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## nizzebro

Lorenc said:


> Ну да… Но от Пугачева и декабристов… *до самого Ленина…* все мечтали о равенстве и братстве.
> 
> *до самого́ Ленина?*


Yes.  There are two senses possible: Lenin himself as mentioned before, or, Lenin as a the most significant figure. С*а́*мый is impossible because a person cannot represent an attribute for some other entity. The only exception could be a case of informal usage in a situation where Ленин is a monument - like that with a wire stretched to 'the very Lenin' or you are meeting someone and they are on the phone saying  'нет, прямо у са́мого Ленина'. But even such option cannot be used towards live humans - since they are self-sufficient beings, not some areas.


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## Awwal12

До са́мого Ле́нина is also possible if Ле́нин = ле́нинская эпо́ха (and therefore represents a point of time). However, it doesn't suit this particular context, since Lenin is clearly implied as a personality.


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## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> However, it doesn't suit this particular context, since Lenin is clearly implied as a personality.


Well, and only if we imagine an alternative history where Lenin starts an era where you cannot dream of equality and brotherhood anymore (which in general has some sense  ).


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## Sobakus

The English 'very' can function as a generic noun intensifier, and this is why "the very thing" makes sense. This is not the case in Russian: _са́мая вещь_ is incomplete and leaves one wondering _са́мая кака́я??_ Normally it can only modify a pronoun: _та/эта/она са́мая (вещь)._ This recalls Latin with its familiar reference to the master of the house as _ipsimus_ "the (dear) man himself", lit. "himselfest", suggesting a telescoping of "his most X self".

Joining _са́мый_ with a noun that doesn't express a scalar quality (such as _са́мый у́мница_) or prepositionally expressed distance is only possible in the Nominative and sounds borderline ungrammatical. It might be a relic of the time when short and long adjectives were still undifferentiated, but nowadays sounds like construction mixing.

Examples like _с/до самого <чего-то>_ can be reduced to this:

Are you talking about time or distance? Can you say _бли́же к <чему́-то>?_—use _*са́мого* (са́мый)_.
Are you stressing identity and individuality, picking up a previous topic? Can you say _не до чего́ уго́дно, а и́менно до э́того?_ —use _*самого́* (сам)_.
I recommend you avoid mentally translating into another language, least of all English. Прове́рки на граммати́чность ну́жно проводи́ть на само́м языке́ _(а не на чём-то друго́м)_ - то́ есть на то́м _же_ са́мом языке́.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> The English 'very' can function as a generic noun intensifier, and this is why "the very thing" makes sense. This is not the case in Russian: _са́мая вещь_ is incomplete and leaves one wondering _са́мая кака́я??_


In English "*the* very" obviously implies definiteness and therefore works in a quite close fashion as an intensifier, minus the stylistics.


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## lit.trans

1b, 2b, and 3b are correct.
в са́мом means "in the most": "в са́мом большом доме" = in the biggest house
в само́м или в нем само́м,   в ней само́й means "himself", "herself", "itself". 
"Ценность вещи не всегда в ней само́й" = The value of a thing is not necessarily the thing itself.


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## Lorenc

Sobakus said:


> I recommend you avoid mentally translating into another language, least of all English. Прове́рки на граммати́чность ну́жно проводи́ть на само́м языке́ _(а не на чём-то друго́м)_ - то́ есть на то́м _же_ са́мом языке́.



My main method of learning such things is by looking and reading many examples, and the brain more or less unconsciouly picks up the correct pattern eventually. However, I feel that formal grammatical explanations and translations also serve an useful role. Specifically for the са́мого/самого́ conundrum I've collected a large number of correctly-stressed sentences (at the moment almost 700 sentences, taken from dictionaries, youtube subtitles, the Национальный корпус русского языка and other sources). Just reading and studying the examples was hugely useful. I've also written (for fun) a computer program which tries to determine the correct wordstress on the basis of the context of the word. At the moment the program has an accuracy of about 95%, which I think is more-or-less as high as a simple, automated system can obtain. This result indicates that in most cases the wordstress choice is mechanically determined by the surrounding words (examples of such rules are:  'самого + word-ending-in-ого/его' => са́мого ; 'word-ending-in-ть/чь + самого + word-ending-in-а/я' => самого́).


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## nizzebro

Lorenc said:


> This result indicates that in most cases the wordstress choice is mechanically determined by the surrounding words (examples of such rules are: 'самого + word-ending-in-ого/его' => са́мого ; 'word-ending-in-ть/чь + самого + word-ending-in-а/я' => самого́).



But what about e.g. these:

Cамого́ лесничего(noun) не было дома
Достичь са́мого края вселенной

I guess that even if your code is based on a network, it still does not use syntactical info, right?


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## MIDAV

My feeling is that in a lot of situations, the pronoun *сам, сама, само* functions simply as a definite article of sorts. It's hard to provide examples as this kind of usage would crucially depend on the context. In any event, it's nothing like the use of _stesso _or _da solo _in Italian. Also, translating it into English with _itself, himself etc _makes the English pronoun sound redundant in those cases.


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## Awwal12

Awwal12 said:


> In English "*the* very" obviously implies definiteness and therefore works in a quite close fashion as an intensifier, minus the stylistics.


P.S.: It should be stressed, however, that most of the time "самый" is not an intensifier or, at least, not _just_ an intensifier.


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## nizzebro

MIDAV said:


> My feeling is that in a lot of situations, the pronoun *сам, сама, само* functions simply as a definite article of sorts



Only if сам is related to the grammatical subject, and in such case it is more about selection - that is, thematic focus (or call it how you like), than about determination:

Они уже об этом знали, но сам он этого ещё не знал.   ≈ ...but (as for him,) he didn't (know that).

but
Они хотели это у него узнать, но он этого ещё сам не знал . ≈ ...but he was unaware of that himself.


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## MIDAV

nizzebro said:


> Only if сам is related to the grammatical subject, and in such case it is more about selection - that is, thematic focus (or call it how you like), than about determination:



Not sure we are talking about the same thing. What I mean is the use of *сам/сама/само* as in the text below. That's a review of a hotel in Bulgaria (hate to place this huge text here but that's a really good example I think). To me it's clearly about definiteness, except maybe for the last instance. And yes, that's the complete review!

_Останавливались в этом отеле неоднократно, несколько лет подряд. Отель городского типа, находится примерно на одинаковом расстоянии от южного и северного пляжа (10-15 минутах хотьбы). *Сам* отель довольно новый, на первом этаже живут хозяева. *Сама* хозяйка Нелли прекрасно говорит по-русски. Номера просторные, некоторые из них оборудованы небольшой кухней. Во всех номерах двойные кровати, диван, журнальный стол, холодильник, телевизор, душ (не душевая кабина). Все чистое, ванные комнаты чистые, но очень маленькие. Убираются ежедневно. Белье меняют раз в неделю. Есть кондиционеры (за отдельную плату). Надо не забывать, что, всвязи с тем, что отель находится в *самом* городе, его окна выходят на довольно оживленные (в плане пешеходов) улицы. Так что ожидать абсолютной тишины не стоит. Движение в *самом* городе не интенсивное, так что машины никогда не беспокоят. В отеле нет лифта, и подниматься на свой этаж с чемоданами нужно всегда самим - не стоит за это обижаться на хозяев  В каждом номере есть балкон, зачастую очень большой, разделенный с соседями решеткой. Сейфов нет ни в номерах, ни внизу. Сколько раз там останавливались, с кражами никогда не сталкивались. Персонал и *сами* хозяева очень приветливые и милые. С удовольствием отвечу на вопросы, если кому-то нужна более подробная инфа._


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## Awwal12

MIDAV said:


> *Сама* хозяйка Нелли прекрасно говорит по-русски.


Frankly, here "сама" was entirely out of place.


MIDAV said:


> Отель городского типа, находится примерно на одинаковом расстоянии от южного и северного пляжа (10-15 минутах хотьбы). *Сам* отель довольно новый, на первом этаже живут хозяева.





MIDAV said:


> Движение в *самом* городе не интенсивное, так что машины никогда не беспокоят.





MIDAV said:


> Персонал и *сами* хозяева очень приветливые и милые. С удовольствием отвечу на вопросы, если кому-то нужна более подробная инфа.


Here "сам" kind of reintroduces the old topics.


MIDAV said:


> Надо не забывать, что, всвязи с тем, что отель находится в *самом* городе


And here it's simply an intensifier, kind of contrastive ("in the city/town itself, not somewhere else").


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## MIDAV

Awwal12 said:


> Here "сам" kind of reintroduces the old topics.


Isn't that what the definite article is all about? 


Awwal12 said:


> And here it's simply an intensifier, kind of contrastive ("in the city/town itself, not somewhere else").


Same, to a lesser degree 


Awwal12 said:


> Frankly, here "сама" was entirely out of place.


I agree with you here, but this kind of usage is becoming increasingly popular I think.


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## nizzebro

MIDAV said:


> *Сам* отель довольно новый, на первом...


Сам отель довольно новый = _as for the hotel_, it is... = focus
... живут хозяева. Сама хозяйка Нелли прекрасно = _and, as for the hostess_, whose name is Nelly,...  = focus
связи с тем, что отель находится в самом городе,  = the hotel is located _directly_ in the city  = analogue of "itself"
Движение в самом городе =  analogue of "itself"
Персонал и сами хозяева = analogue of "itself"


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## Awwal12

MIDAV said:


> Isn't that what the definite article is all about?


Nope. Definiteness has nothing to do with topicality. With definite articles you are basically obliged to mark out any recurring or otherwise predetermined noun (the exact rules vary cross-linguistically).


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## nizzebro

MIDAV said:


> Isn't that what the definite article is all about?


I saw a cat.. ...  The cat was green. (cat has become determinate - actually, already after the first sentence).
After that, I saw a crow. I killed it; but as for the cat, I kissed it. (cat is taken as a topic; 'I kissed the cat' would use him as  a comment.)

In the very first sentence, 'cat' is still introduced as a topic, but we could say 'I saw a cat.. ...  and I liked the cat I met". - now, the first use of 'the' is a comment.


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## MIDAV

nizzebro said:


> I saw a cat.. ... The cat was green. (cat has become determinate - actually, already after the first sentence).


Sounds a bit condescending but whatever. I could expand your cat story like this for example:
_Там был кот. Я не сразу его увидел. Его было плохо видно. Сам кот был зеленый. _End of story 

Please note I am not saying that's perfect style and great wording. I'm just saying it is possible in the current usage.


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## nizzebro

MIDAV said:


> Сам кот был зеленый.


What this 'сам' is intended to be opposite to?
In your hotel example, they still use some opposition: Сам отель = they switch to the hotel after talking about the city etc.

P.S. It seems I got your point. It is the topic as well: Speaking of its look, it was green. (actually, you are selecting not the cat but its look as the topic, opposing it to the cat's appearance or visibility).


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## MIDAV

nizzebro said:


> What this 'сам' is intended to be opposite to?


That's the whole point! There is no opposition or selection but people are still using it like that. 


nizzebro said:


> Сам отель довольно новый = _as for the hotel_, it is... = focus


As for the hotel, what you are suggesting is not possible. The very same hotel was mentioned in the previous two sentences. Consider the translation below (based on your comment). Hint, it is not good:  
_We have stayed in this hotel many times, several years in a row. The hotel is an urban hotel, located about the same distance from the south and north beach (10-15 minutes walk). As for the hotel, it is fairly new_


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## nizzebro

Sorry, I added a bit to my previous post.



MIDAV said:


> The very same hotel was mentioned in the previous two sentences.


And? You can use it as a topic as much as you want. The matter is opposition. The say 'сам отель' only because they are focusing on ' довольно новый,'  - as opposed to: 'на одинаковом расстоянии от ...' Actually, they want to say something like: 'as for its internals...'


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Nope. Definiteness has nothing to do with topicality. With definite articles you are basically obliged to mark out any recurring or otherwise predetermined noun (the exact rules vary cross-linguistically).


Yet again I'd like to suggest you be more careful and circumspect in making sweeping statements on topics you aren't well familiar with. Definiteness not only has much to do with topicality: Arnold JE, Kaiser E, Kahn JM, Kim LK. Information structure: linguistic, cognitive, and processing approaches, 2013


> Many languages, including English, use different expressions for definite and indefinite information. For example, if the speaker has just been talking to someone about a particular dog, the speaker can refer to it with the definite expression the dog or perhaps even the pronoun it. However, if the dog is mentioned in the conversation for the first time, the speaker may use the indefinite expression a dog. In English, the definite article ‘the’ is traditionally regarded as indicating that the noun is specific and familiar to both the speaker and the hearer, by virtue of having already been mentioned in the discourse.


Definiteness often arises from topic markers: Maurice Pico. 2019. A nascent definiteness marker in Yokot’an Maya, Ch. 5 p.154
The Late Latin _ipse_ "him/itself" gave the definite article in several Romance varieties.

The disagreement between @MIDAV and @nizzebro is due to the fact that _сам_ (like _ipse)_ marks *contrastive topic*.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> _сам_ (like _ipse)_ marks *contrastive topic*


It can, though it's by no means its only function (it's exceedingly easy to provide examples where сам marks not a really contrastive topic or not a topic at all). In particular, in most examples from above it can be interpreted as a simple topic switcher.

Btw, indirect links between definiteness and topicality are likely (for one, topics are most typically definite), though I must admit I've failed to see how the quatation above supports any of that.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> In particular, in most examples from above it can be interpreted as a simple topic switcher.


For our intents and purpsoes this is the same function (Aissen 2017 p.21):


> An important observation is that establishing a new topic comes with some degree of contrast as the speaker selects the current topic from a larger set of potential (alternative) topics. For this reason, the introduction of a new or switch topic is often encoded in the same way as a contrastive topic





Awwal12 said:


> Btw, indirect links between definiteness and topicality are likely (for one, topics are most typically definite), though I must admit I've failed to see how the quatation above supports any of that.


"the noun is specific and familiar to both the speaker and the hearer, by virtue of having already been mentioned in the discourse" is a good definition of *topic.* Prince 1992 establishes the concepts _Discourse-old/new_ and _Hearer-old/new_ and finds that definiteness is an expression of the latter. _Discourse-old/new_ therefore is therefore an expression of the topic-comment structure. The two are very closely linked, and definiteness markers start out in the "weak definite" function (the cat is black) before progressing to the "strong definite" function (the Earth is round).


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> "the noun is specific and familiar to both the speaker and the hearer, by virtue of having already been mentioned in the discourse" is a good definition of *topic.*


Topic is, basically, the theme of the sentence. As I said, topics are most typically definite, but it isn't really necessary (consider non-referential indefinite topics), and a definite argument doesn't need to be the topic at all.
I may be not very good at understanding nuances of communicative strategy, but I've read my share of books.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Topic is, basically, the theme of the sentence. As I said, topics are most typically definite, but it isn't really necessary (consider non-referential indefinite topics), and a definite argument doesn't need to be the topic at all.


I agree with this. What nobody can agree with is that "definiteness has nothing to do with topicality" - the two notions are closely linked, if not two sides of the same coin: one is discourse-oriented and the other hearer-oriented.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> What nobody can agree with is that "definiteness has nothing to do with topicality"


I hope we can call it a contextual hyperbole and be done with it.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> Definiteness often arises from topic markers


This is reasonable, and, even though I haven't read the papers, I agree. In principle it is the matter of terminology.

Just one comment: English is a language which consists solely of nouns (ok, and adjectives). They do not have deep dichotomous patterns behind the sentence structure.  Only nouns there, which lexical meanings are mixed together. Their 'the' is just 'this'. This is deixis applied to the flow of context. But the 'normal' topic-comment implies exactly this pair: topic and comment. The first of them is a broader area, the second involves narrowing of meaning. I cannot see this in regard to their articles. Those are just modifiers of a general idea of subject or object as 'any such'/'the mentioned one'.


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## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> Their 'the' is just 'this'.


It is "that", if you want to go into reductionism. The default English deictic is distal, not proximal. And etymologically "the" is also closely tied to "that".


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## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> Their 'the' is just 'this'. This is deixis applied to the flow of context. But the 'normal' topic-comment implies exactly this pair: topic and comment. The first of them is a broader area, the second involves narrowing of meaning. I cannot see this in regard to their articles. Those are just modifiers of a general idea of subject or object as 'any such'/'the mentioned one'.


Definiteness isn't deixis, although deixis is often the origin and always one of its functions. The terms 'topic' and 'comment' aren't that well defined either and there are many conflicting attempts to do it.

The cognitive-scientific concept of 'mental files' can be helpful here. Roughly speaking, noun _definiteness_ instructs the listener to retreive the referent from an existing mental file. _Indefiniteness_ instructs them to create a new mental file. _Topicalisation_ specifies the existing mental file that the listener is instructed to update with the contents of the _comment_. Be advised that I didn't read this anywhere but just made that up myself.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> Articles aren't deixis, although this is one of their functions


No objection, I mentioned that only regarding the discussed examples.


Sobakus said:


> Roughly speaking, noun definiteness instructs the listener to retreive the referent from an existing mental file. Topicalisation specifies the existing mental file that the listener is instructed to update.


This is great, but does not change the fact that topic-comment is a dichotomy within a sentence, and, as such it is present in English as well, as a final result when the sentence is assembled. They use those 'speaking of', also they front adjuncts. If there is a more general definition, it should explain how this opposition relates to, and coexists with that which is not bound to the sentence structure.


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## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> This is great, but does not change the fact that topic-comment is a dichotomy within a sentence, and, as such it is present in English as well, as a final result when the sentence is assembled. They use those 'speaking of', also they front adjuncts. If there is a more general definition, it should explain how this opposition relates to, and coexists with that which is not bound to the sentence structure.


Information structure (in the domain of pragmatics) is much wider than the sentence and is entirely separate from sentence structure (which is the domain of grammar). In the widest sense it involves the entire encyclopedic knowledge of the individual. This is how it's related to definiteness, which has contextual (weak) as well as contextually-independent (strong) uses. The main difference, from one point of view, is that between: 1) the information that's been activated at the moment for both the speaker and the hearer, limited to a specific speech-act; 2) the entirety of the information that the speaker assumes to be available to the hearer. Thus discourse-oriented vs. hearer-oriented.

edit: Prince's above-mentioned article also highlights the difficulty:



> Although the notion of definiteness/indefiniteness seems to be relatively straightforward, it in fact has been subject to a good deal of confusion. In particular, it is taken to be a formal property of NPs but, often at the same time, it is also taken to be a conceptual property of entities in a discourse model.



I actually think what I write in the above message  (updated, not the version you quoted) encapsulates the entire relationship. It highlights the link between definiteness and topicalisation (old-information), as well as indefineteness and comment (new-information).


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> _Topicalisation_ specifies the existing mental file that the listener is instructed to update with the contents of the _comment_.


I cannot grasp the following:

1) A strange-looking cat  walked down the street. 
2) As for a man who does not like cats, such person's life is a sad story.

How are articles embedded in the structure of topical relations here? Are these a-s the highest level or...?


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## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> I cannot grasp the following:
> 
> 1) A strange-looking cat  walked down the street.
> 2) As for a man who does not like cats, such person's life is a sad story.
> 
> How are articles embedded in the structure of topical relations here? Are these a-s the highest level or...?


They aren't. Articles are embedded in the clause structre ("a formal property of NPs"). Topical relations are a "property of entities in a discourse model". These are two independent linguistic levels. There's a mapping between information structure and formal linguistic cues such as articles, other syntax (word order) and intonation. Even apart from that, I'm unsure which levels you have in mind - I've never seen a description of a tiered topic-comment structure, and I'm not sure that it can be treated as tiered. An utterance - maybe a communicative move - has one topic and one comment.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> which levels you have in mind - I've never seen a description of a tiered topic-comment structure, and I'm not sure that it can be recursive at all.


Any level in a broad sense, where that mapping occurs - if these notions have common, that common feature should take place somewhere. As for recursion, it depends on a view on the structure: to me, "В этом здании, на 2 этаже, в ящике стола лежит сто долларов" might be considered such. Or, "А у Машки нашей - голова-то не мытая, а ноги вроде чистые".


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## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> Any level in a broad sense, where that mapping occurs - if these notions have common, that common feature should take place somewhere. As for recursion, it depends on a view on the structure: to me, "В этом здании, на 2 этаже, в ящике стола лежит сто долларов" might be considered such. Or, "А у Машки нашей - голова-то не мытая, а ноги вроде чистые".


The mapping occurs between, not at, the level of grammatical structure, which is recursive, and the topic-comment structure, which isn't necessarily so. One level is linguistic, the other seems rather to be conceptual. The conceptual level operates on holistic things like gestalts (not that I know much about this). Your examples are linguistic utterances which are inherently recursive, but the mental file framework that I mention envisages a 3D-like structure of nodes, and not linear recursion. Of course it's likely that discourse structure is an emergent phenomenon not limited to just one cognitive level, but what is clear is that articles, which are purely formal elements of grammar, cannot be embedded into discourse structure, which is fundamentally conceptual. Articles instruct the hearer to retrieve or create a concept to be embedded into discourse structure.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> he mapping occurs between, not at, the level of grammatical structure


I am still not sure what you mean by that mapping, but ok. My point is only that these English determiners are pure lexis - they are adjectival meanings of the same kind as 'blue', 'outer', 'every' and so on - no matter what they are addressing.  Similarly, lexical aspects have nothing to do with grammatical aspects . Roughly speaking, for the microprocessor of human mind, lexis are machine codes which represent addresses of data, while such things as grammatical aspects or topical markers (and word reordering as well) are machine commands of that microprocessor. In English, many such commands are discarded, so they mostly operate with ready-to-use blocks of data which are then glued together,  but, such approach requires strict word order. This is a crucial difference. Topic markers are not lexis because they are not static semantic modules; any adequate definition of them will end up with '...it functions as...' The same is partly true in regard to our 'сам' (but less strictly than for  e.g. 'же', '-то' or  initial 'А ...' or word reordering).

Suppose I want to introduce 'a man who does not like washing' as a topic, and after that, I'm addressing him as 'he' a few times. This pronoun, 'he', is just an alias in the same way as e.g. a term which is too long so it is to be replaced with an abbreviation. The pronoun is only a lexical meaning: 'the last mentioned male'. Suppose that after that, I introduce 'a woman who does not like washing' as a new topic. After that, I want to switch to 'a man who...'.  This notion itself is about a particularly taken instance of a man with some specific traits  - a type which is implemented through an individual entity. And, even being imaginary, 'a man who' is such individual. I might experience problems with using 'a' determiner next time - due to ambiguity. But, this issue is not about old/new information in discourse. It is about correctness of the definition only - in the same manner as that with any other definition which could create ambiguity - e.g. two identical names, or that with 'it' in cases when there are two entities which that pronoun could refer - so you have to repeat your term to avoid confusion. All that stuff is related to addressing the right data, not to the inner mechanics of discourse.  Lexis might address anything - gestalts, black holes, whatever, but, it is still lexis. Topic-comment is, on the contrary, related to the very mechanics which our mind, or even, our perception, uses while assembling so called objective reality. It controls human attention - first, 'Машка', then, focus on  'её голова'...

Btw, the next level of language rational development (and perceptional degradation) which is coming is already visible: those pictograms,  icons of computer interface: just click and it works.


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## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> I am still not sure what you mean by that mapping, but ok.


A possibility to correlate mental entities with formal linguistic features. A definite article retrieves known information, a high intonation marks contrastive topic, using a past tense means you don't believe the situation to be ongoing.


nizzebro said:


> My point is only that these English determiners are pure lexis - they are adjectival meanings of the same kind as 'blue', 'outer', 'every' and so on - no matter what they are addressing.


What you're saying is exactly the opposite of the actual reality. The thing that sets articles, determiners, pronouns from other words is that *have no lexical meaning.* That's literally the first thing one should know about them. Expressions whose meaning is not lexically but contextually defined are called indexicals.


nizzebro said:


> Similarly, lexical aspects have nothing to do with grammatical aspects.


Of course they have something to do with each other - do you think the name "aspect" in both is accidental? Certain languages choose to mark certain aspectual features (Aktionsarts) or their combinations that other languages don't. Some researchers even conflate them or deny the existence of one or the other, cue Szeremenyi 1987 p.9


> _"And another well-known theoretician, Eugenio Coseriu also thinks 30) that aspect is not a binary system, as in Slavic, nor a ternary (or quaternary) system as in Kurylowicz's view; aspect is a collection of "possibilités universelles du langage qui peuvent être réalisées dans les langues", i. e. an open-ended "system", from which the languages choose some, and never realize others."_





nizzebro said:


> In English, many such commands are discarded, so they mostly operate with ready-to-use blocks of data which are then glued together,  but, such approach requires strict word order.


I'm 99% sure there exists no research that suggests anything even remotely like this. Modern generative frameworks treat such differences as surface and trivial - some languages mark syntactic case synthetically (endings) and some analytically (function words or word order). No commands are discarded, both work the same under the hood.


nizzebro said:


> Topic markers are not lexis because they are not static semantic modules; any adequate definition of them will end up with '...it functions as...' The same is partly true in regard to our 'сам' (but less strictly than for  e.g. 'же', '-то' or  initial 'А ...' or word reordering).


I can't believe you don't realise that the same is true of articles.


nizzebro said:


> Suppose I want to introduce 'a man who does not like washing' as a topic, and after that, I'm addressing him as 'he' a few times. This pronoun, 'he', is just an alias in the same way as e.g. a term which is too long so it is to be replaced with an abbreviation. The pronoun is only a lexical meaning: 'the last mentioned male'.


A lexical meaning is "a male individual of the species Homo sapiens" or "to clean with water and, typically, soap or detergent". The pronoun "he" in this case functions as an anaphor - it retrieves the lexical meaning from the noun phrase it's referring back to. "Pro-noun" = (subtitute) for-a-name.

Hopefully after you clear up your confusion about lexical meaning and indexicality is, what I'm saying will start making more sense. Definiteness allows you to locate items (mental files) inside your head that you can use in discourse; topic and comment orient you inside the discourse - they're the two slots where you put items you've found in order to update information about them, typically through a 'merge' operation.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> The thing that sets articles, determiners, pronouns from other words is that *have no lexical meaning.* That's literally the first thing one should know about them. Expressions whose meaning is not lexically but contextually defined are called indexicals.


This is probably a question of terminology again.  What I mean is that determiners are attributes, which definition is a matter of categorization which involves static notions only. Articles can have sense even taken separately in collocation with nouns:  you can differentiate to a degree between 'a cat' and 'the cat' without using these in context. Try that with e.g. 'же' (except those 'X же!' in the internet which are still context related) or with 'as for X'.


Sobakus said:


> Of course they have something to do with each other - do you think the name "aspect" in both is accidental?


No, they have nothing absolutely; and,  yes, this naming is accidental.  Lexical aspects are about the potential structure of real-world actions; grammatical aspects are about the structure of transitions which form general patterns for our mind - and, the latter initially 'do not care' of which real-world thing they denote, same as the cinema mechanics does not care about the movie content. In English, you can say 'as he crossed the street, he was hit by a car' only because the Simple tense is an object-like stretch of 'crossing' which itself, as a form, does not imply the final stage the way Perfective does that - so completion for 'crossed' appears only within the context. 


Sobakus said:


> A lexical meaning is "a male individual of the species Homo sapiens" or "to clean with water and, typically, soap or detergent".


Both combined, to be exact - as in this case individuality comes through their combination. Which shows us that its (under)definiteness is an ordinary sort of semantic content of a single term - nothing special.

 Topic and comment are not slots to put something. Without them, you simply cannot speak; predication is only a perverted notion of the actual  topic-comment relation (as European mind cannot live without 'true and false'), but topic-comment is not about 'what is what ' but about the way our attention assembles the reality, acting like a spider: first it takes wider 'threads', then it narrows and refines them. Topic switching is just changing the wider ones. How definite they are does not matter. Everything that has a name is definite in some sense.


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## Sobakus

Determiners aren't attributes. Articles are purely grammatical and devoid of semantic meaning in the same sense as "же". What you say about aspects is utter nonsense and contradicts the scholarly reference I gave you, which you arrogantly ignore. Individuality (called referentiality) is in no way connected with lexical meaning and both exist uncombined. Everything else you say merits no comment.


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## Sobakus

PS: seems I had read it somewhere after all.


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## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> Determiners aren't attributes.


OK, will 'noun modifiers' do? The matter is not terms. I don't know which terms they use in English primary or high schools and why.
 I expected you understand what I'm talking about, as I used 'attribute' in a broad sense - purely semantically.  A thing which can act as a  separate entity, is 'object' (in a broad sense as well); a thing which cannot exist as separate but only applies to an 'object,' is 'attribute'. 

And,  I already mentioned that, by lexical meaning, I understand a meaning which can be in principle defined or explained in bounds of a set of static semantic traits (which set can be an object, or an attribute) - without touching any additional functionality. To me, 'a' can be explained in such way: it describes its object as a particularly taken instance, one of many of that kind and not mentioned before. This definition does not involve  any functionality, such as that related to topic-comment, for the meaning to be explained.


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## Vovan

MIDAV said:


> _Останавливались в этом отеле неоднократно, несколько лет подряд. <...>_



1. "Персонал и *сами *хозяева очень приветливые". (=Тоже, также.)
2. "Отель находится в *само́м *городе". (=Непосредственно.)
3. "Движение в *само́м *городе не интенсивное". (=Непосредственно. Повторное употребление "самом" в том же значении и с тем же словом можно считать неудачным. Кроме того, здесь оно логически избыточно.)
4. (в сокр.) "Отель городского типа, в 10-15 минутах ходьбы от пляжа. *Сам *отель довольно новый..." ("Сам по себе", т.е. в отрыве от оценки окружения.)
5. "На первом этаже живут хозяева. *Сама *хозяйка Нелли прекрасно говорит по-русски". (Возможно, "Хозяйка сама говорит по-русски (=умеет говорить)"?)


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## Şafak

Lorenc said:


> I sometimes have to think really hard about the correct stress for са́мом/само́м  (and similarly са́мого/самого́, са́мой/само́й and са́мому/самому́, but let's leave this for another discussion).
> Please consider the following sentences with the са́мом/само́м dilemma:
> 
> 1. «Что он вам сделал?» — и разве Джеймс не ответил ей: «Пожалуй, *всё дело в самом факте его существования*, если ты понимаешь, о чём я»?
> 
> 1a. всё дело в са́мом факте его существования => the whole matter is in the very fact of his existence
> 1b. всё дело в само́м факте его существования => the whole matter is in the fact itself of his existence
> 
> Both English translations make kind-of sense (1a more than 1b).
> 
> 2. Ее первая тюремщица умерла, однако жалкое положение Арианы Думбльдор не улучшилось. *О самом ее существовании мало кто знал*, и все посвященные, подобно «Песьему Смраду» Дожу, верили сказкам о слабом здоровье девочки.
> 
> 2a. О са́мом ее существовании мало кто знал => Few knew about her very existence
> 2b. О само́м ее существовании мало кто знал => Few knew about her existence itself
> 
> Like in case 1., both translations make kind-of sense to me, 2a more than 2b.
> 
> 3. Его горящий взгляд скользнул от Рона, лежавшего на кровати, к Гермионе, прижавшейся к стене, от неё — к Гарри, который замер с палочкой над Блэком, *и остановился на самом Блэке*, поверженном и окровавленном у ног Гарри.
> 
> 3a. и остановился на са́мом Блэке => and stopped right over Black
> 3b. и остановился на само́м Блэке => and stopped over Black himself
> 
> Same as 1. and 2.: it seems to me that 3a makes more sense but I'm not too sure.


1a. само́м 
2b. само́м 
3b. само́м

I haven't read the thread but I'd like to give the right answers to Lorenc.


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## Lorenc

nizzebro said:


> But what about e.g. these:
> 
> Cамого́ лесничего(noun) не было дома
> Достичь са́мого края вселенной



You are perfectly right: my program would get these wrong; the rules I introduced are only probabilistic: they 1. try to be as simple and as general as possible and 2. to maximise the accuracy in my working set of ~700 sentences. One could improve, for example, by including a list of лесничего-type word (adjective-like nouns), but I tried to avoid hard-coding specific words (apart from prepositions, pronouns and other function words). In any case there'll always be difficult cases where the program "gets it wrong".



nizzebro said:


> I guess that even if your code is based on a network, it still does not use syntactical info, right?



I'm not exactly sure what you mean... if you are referring to a neural network then no, my program doesn't use this technique, it's just a simple-minded sequence of "if-then-else". The big problem of this kind of attempts is the lack of a large corpus of wordstressed Russian. I'm slowly carrying on as a pet-project a general Russian wordstresser. The majority of words can be univocally stressed by using a simple look-up table (eg created using Zalizniak's dictionary); for the majority of the other words the different stresses correspond to different grammatical categories (eg руки́/ру́ки), and usually the ambiguity can be resolved by looking at neighbouring words (eg в руки can only be в ру́ки). Word-form with ambiguous wordstress and which belong to the same grammatical category, such as за́мок/замо́к, про́клятый/прокля́тый, отре́зать/ореза́ть or, indeed, са́мого/самого́ (etc.) are really difficult and must be dealt with one-by-one. Fortunately such words are few, I don't think there should be more than, say, 100 in common use (perhaps less?). Maybe some private company has produced a large body of wordstressed Russian (eg for text-to-speech purposes) but I have to make do with the equivalent of ~2 books of text which I worstressed by myself.


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## Ruukr

Lorenc said:


> One more sentence:
> Гравитационные волны, почти не поглощаясь, проходят сквозь толщу времён и плотностей, *приходят к нам с самого сотворения мира.
> 
> с самого сотворения мира *


since the creation of the world.


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## Ruukr

Lorenc said:


> са́мом
> само́м


са́мом - обычно относится к внешнему и неодушевлённому (действию или предмету, например). 
на са́мом деле (it's really - что-то вроде "on the very live") . 
на са́мом краешке (on the very edge). 

on very the creation of the world. 

само́м - обычно относится к внутреннему, и зачастую, к одушевлённому. 
в само́м деле (in (very) the case).
в само́й душе (in (very) the sole).


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