# weiß und leicht...



## Micamoca

Ich suche ein Synonym für "leicht":

Kontext: F.v. Schirrach: _Tabu_...(er spricht von einem Haus es leuchtete weiß und leicht in der Sonne...

*Anmerkung der Moderatorin*: Ursprünglichen Threadtitel mit aufgenommen; im Threadtitel sollte bitte *nur* der problematische Ausdruck stehen. Danke!


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## Kajjo

Für welchen Zweck benötigst du das? Übersetzung? Verständnis?


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## Micamoca

Übersetzung...


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## manfy

in English "faint"
auf Deutsch "blass/ein wenig/ein bisschen"


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## Micamoca

Zunächst vielen Dank. Deutsch ist zwar nicht meine Muttersprache, aber mein Gefühl war (und das wird im Duden bestätigt), dass es so etwas wie "nicht schwerfällig" bedeuten kann...ich bin jedoch in diesem Kontext nicht sicher...deshalb die Frage.  Blass scheint mir eher negativ (nicht ausdrucksvoll)...und der Betrachter hatte eher einen positiven Eindruck...


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## Frieder

Vielleicht suchst du _airily_?


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## manfy

Nein, nein! "Blass" kann zwar einen negativen Ausdruck darstellen, muss es aber nicht! Kontext ist ausschlaggebend.
Hier hat es die Bedeutung von "nicht intensiv" und es kann hier auch als positiv und wünschenswert empfunden werden!


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## Micamoca

wie dezent...?


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## Micamoca

Übrigens, danke allen am Brainstorming!


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## Shiratori99

Wenn ich "weiß und leicht" lese, denke ich zunächst an ein leichtes, luftiges Sommerkleid. Im übertragenen Sinne könnte der Ausdruck hier meinen, dass dem Erzähler das Haus einen frohen und unbeschwerten Eindruck vermittelt hat.


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## bearded

Für mich geht 'blass' nicht, weil es mich an 'bleich' denken lässt.  Vgl. WRDict.: ''blass = fast weiß'' , also ist 'weiß und fast weiß' unmöglich.
Mir gefällt 'airy'. 
_It was gleaming white and airy in the sunshine..._


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## Kajjo

bearded man said:


> _It was gleaming white and airy in the sunshine..._


Perfect!


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## Shiratori99

Kajjo said:


> Perfect!



Dann aber _"airily"_.


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## manfy

Interesting! Are you guys saying that based on dictionary lookups or on actual usage of "airy" or "airily"?
Truth be told, after having lived now for a reasonably long time in English-speaking environments, I think, I've practically never ever come across that word in actual use! (except maybe in its literal meaning of well ventilated, full of fresh air).
Just to not make a total fool out of myself, I did a search on Google books/ngram. The primary use over the last 100 years seemed to be "to speak airily about something", d.h. in Richtung von "irgendetwas leichtfertig sagen/ausplappern".

I'd be curious to hear a native speaker's view on that.


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## bearded

According to M-Webster Dictionary:  ''airy = light and graceful'' (among other meanings). And the sentence in question seems to be fairly poetic...


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## manfy

bearded man said:


> According to M-Webster Dictionary:  ''airy = light and graceful'' (among other meanings). And the sentence in question seems to be fairly poetic...


 
Oh yes! I'm not saying that it's impossible! The first thing I did was looking it up in my digital dictionary. I got 7-8 definitions, all of which I would have guessed myself, provided the word appears in the right context.

Unfortunately the OP is just a fragment of a sentence and you can read pretty much anything into it. I never read Schirach before, so I have no real feeling on his language use or style of expression. In my experience, it usually takes at least 2 or 3 pages to get me aligned with the style and thinking of a specific author.


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## Kajjo

manfy said:


> Are you guys saying that based on dictionary lookups or on actual usage of "airy" or "airily"?
> Truth be told, after having lived now for a reasonably long time in English-speaking environments, I think, I've practically never ever come across that word in actual use!


You are right, I get your point. I believe I saw "airily" in such usages, but I agree it is a rare word.

However, if you asked me how often I saw "es leuchtete leicht in der Sonne" then I would say NEVER. This usage is not idiomatic, it is highly individual and somewhat strange, too. Thus, "airily could fit very well.


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## Micamoca

Vielen dank für die Mühe...sehr aufschlussreich...


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## bearded

Shiratori99 said:


> Dann aber _"airily"_.


Do you mean that in this case an adverb should be used? (My dictionaries only know 'airily' as an adverb).  Why? _He was going his way, calm and satisfied. _I think adjectives would do here. Or perhaps would you say _whitely and airily?_


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## Shiratori99

bearded man said:


> Do you mean that in this case an adverb should be used? (My dictionaries only know 'airily' as an adverb).  Why? _He was going his way, calm and satisfied. _I think adjectives would do here. Or perhaps would you say _whitely and airily?_



Yes, it has to be an adverb. The house is not airy, it's _shining airily_.

Actually, why "whitely" is not used here is a good question. I believe it's grammatically correct, but I've never heard or seen it used in everyday speech. "Shining white" seems to be a set phrase.


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## bearded

If in German I say:  ''er ging, schweigend und trau rig, nach Hause'', I think that schweigend and traurig are adjectives (predicatives of the subject), not adverbs.  Er ging nicht schweigenderweise, sondern indem er schweigend war. I see no difference with ''it was shining - airy and white - in the sun (or, if you prefer, it was shining in the sun, airy and white).


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> If in German I say: ''er ging, schweigend und trau rig, nach Hause'', I think that schweigend and traurig are adjectives (predicatives of the subject), not adverbs.


Adverbs, not adjectives.

There is a (rather recent) school of grammarians of English who analyse those as adjectives. If you tell that theory to German grammarians, be prepared to be called names. (Having been educated in the German tradition, I actually once had to leave a discussion on this in the English forum because I knew I couldn't stay polite when confronted with that theory.)


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## bearded

>berndf< : I couldn' stay polite when confronted with that theory

Please stay polite some more minutes, berndf.  In German it is sometimes difficult to distinguish adjectives from adverbs, so for comparison let's take a language - like a Romance language - where adverbs are mostly marked by the -mente/ment ending.
''La casa brillava ,bianca e leggera, nel sole'' / La maison brillait, blanche et légère, dans le soleil'' / the house was gleaming, white and airy, in the sun:  it seems to me that English behaves more like a Romance language in a case like this.  In those sentences no adverbs woud be suitable...(no -ment endings).


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## berndf

I was of course kidding, at least a little bit.

I hope you agree that those are, if adjectives at all, predicative and not attributive ones and that
_La casa brillava, bianca e leggera, nel sole._
and
_La casa bianca e leggera brillava nel sole._
are neither syntactically nor semantically the same thing. I have no problems understanding _weiß und hell strahlen_ as a predicate.

Agreed?

The question now is if _schweigsam und traurig_ can seriously be understood as predicative in
_Er ging, schweigsam und traurig, nach Hause._
with which I have serious problems.

I.e would you say
_Andò, silenzioso e triste, a casa.
or rather
Andò, silenziosamente e tristemente, a casa._


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## manfy

berndf said:


> The question now is if _schweigsam und traurig_ can seriously be understood as predicative in
> _Er ging, schweigsam und traurig, nach Hause._
> with which I have serious problems.


Without commas, they clearly would be adverbs of "ging" (wie ging er?):
"_Er ging schweigsam und traurig nach Hause._"

... but the commas do open up avenues of debatability: 
"_Er ging, schweigsam und traurig [seiend], nach Hause._"


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## berndf

manfy said:


> but the commas do open up avenues of debatability


Well, the commas don't really make sense in German here. I thought of taking them out to render the sentence more natural. But then I thought of not opening another debate. I think I should have removed them.


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## bearded

In no. 21 I did write 'predicatives of the subject'.
Now, to show the adjective/predicative nature:  what if I said ''er ging schweigsam und schwarzgekleidet nach Hause''?. In no language those could be adverbs, I think (comma or no comma).
I had of course accepted your joke, berndf.


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## manfy

I'd say, an open-minded thinker can find acceptable justifications for both, adjective and adverb, in that sentence.

But according to Ockham's razor, all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best, and in this case that's the adverb. Alors, Allemagne: Douze points; Germany: Twelve points.

And since Ockham's razor was perceived and conceptualized in beautyful Piemonte, Italy ... Italie: douze points; Italy: twelve points!

Now you're even!


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## manfy

bearded man said:


> Now, to show the adjective/predicative nature:  what if I said ''er ging schweigsam und schwarzgekleidet nach Hause''?. In no language those could be adverbs, I think (comma or no comma).


Are you sure?
I found another sentence where I first thought, that's definitely an adjective: ''er ging schweigsam und mit traurigem Blick nach Hause''.
"traurig" is definitely an adjective here, but "mit traurigem Blick" is actually an adverbial phrase that modifies "gehen".

The thing is, in this specific sentence it makes absolutely no semantic difference if it's an adjective or adverb. If he's walking quietly, he also IS quiet. And if he is walking sadly, he automatically IS being sad (walking or not). And since we have no obvious syntactic marker for adverbs, the question is sort of academic (for this specific sentence, at least!)


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## bearded

berndf said:


> I.e would you say
> _Andò, silenzioso e triste, a casa.
> or rather
> Andò, silenziosamente e tristemente, a casa._


Both are possible. My favourite version would be _Andava, silenzioso e triste, a/verso casa. _But naturally with _vestito di nero,  _only one version is possible (in analogy to 'white' in the OP sentence): _Andava, triste e vestito di nero, a/verso casa.

EDIT: @manfy _
One of the elements in question (white) can only be an adjective in my view. Consequently, the 2nd must be an adjective,too. Can a house gleam ''whitely/in a white way''?
And in your nice post about Ockham, I do not understand why the adverb should be 'the simplest solution', really.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> _Andava, triste e vestito di nero, a/verso casa._


Why? What is wrong with _tristemente e vestito di nero_? Participles can have adverbial meaning without needing _-mente_ at the end.



bearded man said:


> in analogy to 'white' in the OP sentence


This analogy doesn't quite work. In the "white" case, the adjective is predicative (the shining makes the house "white", not the house as such it "white"). Here I can't see any predicative meaning.


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## bearded

I doubt that 'vestito di nero' can be regarded as an adverb. In German, would you say that 'schwarzgekleidet' is not an adjectivated participle?
Or is ''in schwarzgekleideter Weise'' possible (this would have an adverbial value)?
In Italian, it must be _triste e vestito di nero.  _Or (with adverbials) _tristemente e con un vestito nero. _


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## berndf

You are probably right.


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## manfy

bearded man said:


> And in your nice post about Ockham, I do not understand why the adverb should be 'the simples solution', really.


 
I was saying that based purely on my perspective as a native German speaker.
Since we don't have syntactical markers for adverbs in German, my mind is not even thinking in the direction of adverb vs. adjective when I read that sentence. And here is also where the commas do come into play:

Without commas, "_Er ging schweigsam und traurig nach Hause._" my mind is automatically connecting "schweigsam" and subsequently "traurig" with the verb "ging". Since it makes semantic sense and since grammar doesn't block this interpretation, my mind stops there (and when forced, it tells me 'adjective modifying a verb = adverb').
A comparable and even clearer example is "_Er ging langsam nach Hause._" This can only mean that the walking was done slowly and not that the person was mentally slow - based on semantic logic only!

Now, with commas that changes (for me!): "_Er ging, schweigsam und traurig, nach Hause._" The commas force my mind to detach "schweigsam and traurig" from the verb and my mind is searching for usable, plausible alternatives. And one that quickly comes to mind is "_Er war schweigsam und traurig, und so ging er nach Hause._" And now they are clearly adjectives with predicative use.

Pls note, the way my mind does that is just by transmitting "a feeling, i.e. the accepted meaning of the sentence" to my cognitive mind, and  that happens in a split second! So, this conscious formulation of an alternative sentence and its grammatical analysis normally never happens (except for extremely complicated sentences, maybe) - it is merely my own assumption/analysis, how a brain might process such information from a spoken or written sentence.
And for me this also explains, why my brain would never ask itself "adverb or adjective?"; my language center is completely detached from that concept. Grammar comes only into play when the language center sets the red flag "something's wrong here" or the yellow flag "caution: ambiguity" - and then it's the conscious mind that has to sort it out with grammar and whatnot.


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## perpend

"white and breezy in the sun"

That's just my understanding.


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## bearded

@manfy
Thank you for your post #34 with an interesting comparison between Germanic and Latin brain processes in interpreting grammar structures. This may eventually lead (on a larger philosophical scale) to another thread, having as topic ''is it true that speakers of different languages see the world in a different way?'', or, if you prefer, _Verschiedene Sprachen = verschiedene Weltanschauungen?
_
@perpend
I like your _breezy, _which is an extension of _airy _(but can it be accepted as a translation of 'leicht'?).


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## berndf

manfy said:


> Without commas, "_Er ging schweigsam und traurig nach Hause._" my mind is automatically connecting "schweigsam" and subsequently "traurig" with the verb "ging". Since it makes semantic sense and since grammar doesn't block this interpretation, my mind stops there (and when forced, it tells me 'adjective modifying a verb = adverb').
> A comparable and even clearer example is "_Er ging langsam nach Hause._" This can only mean that the walking was done slowly and not that the person was mentally slow - based on semantic logic only!


Careful! Your argument only means that _schweigsam _and _traurig_ belong to the predicate or the sentence and does not necessarily determine the word form. Since modern German does not morphologically distinguish between predicative adjectives and derived adverbs any more, the distinction has become somewhat arbitrary and, in actual fact, I think do don't make it any more.

We do distinguish between attributive adjectives on the one hand (they are inflected) and predicative adjectives / adverbs on the other hand (they are uninfected). Semantically, the difference is whether the the adjective or adverb 1) describes a property of a noun independent of the statement of the sentence and 2) a property that is particular to the situation described by the sentence (=the predicate). I.e.
_Der schweigsam*e* Mann ging nach Hause_ -- Attributive - morphologically marked - semantics: The man is _schweigsam _anyway and now he is going home. The two facts are unrelated.
_Der Mann ging schweigsam nach Hause_ -- Predicative (could be adjective or adverb) - morphologically unmarked - semantics: The man is _ schweigsam _only in relative to his going home.​
Romance languages (and English follows indeed more the Romance than the German pattern), draw a different distinction: They do not morphologically distinguish attributive and predicative adjectives:
La casa è bianc*a* (predicative adjective).
La casa bianc*a* (attributive adjective).​By comparison:
_Das Haus ist weiß_ (predicative adjective).
_Das weiß*e* Haus_ (attributive adjective).​
But they do distinguish between predicative adjectives and adverbs:
_L'uomo è lent*o*_ (predicative adjective).
_L'uomo lavora lent*amente*_ (adverb).​By comparison:
_Der Mann ist langsam_ (predicative adjective).
_Der Mann arbeitet langsam_ (adverb).​
Consequently, a different semantic distinction is more prominent in Romance language as in German, viz. the distinction between 1) a property of the subject (adjective) and 2) a property of the verb itself, not the predicate as a whole (adverb).

In total there are three cases to distinguish with three different semantics:

Attributive adjective: Describes a property of the subject that is *in*dependent of the predicate of the sentence (=die Satzaussage).
Predicative adjective: Describes a property of the subject that is *de*pendent on the predicate of the sentence (=die Satzaussage).
Adverb: Describes a property of the verb, i.e. way (Art und Weise) an action performed.

In Romance languages, the distinction between 1. & 2. on the one side and 3. on the other side is prominent. The distinction between 1. and 2. is marginal.
In German, the distinction between 1. on the one side and 2. & 3. on the other side is prominent. The distinction between 2. and 3. is marginal.


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## perpend

Und schon wieder ein Faden, wo der durchschnittliche Mensch nicht mitkommen kann. Klasse.

*unlike*


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## manfy

perpend said:


> Und schon wieder ein Faden, wo der durchschnittliche Mensch nicht mitkommen kann. Klasse.
> 
> *unlike*


 
 I feel you, perpend!
To answer with a movie quote: "I think I'm getting too old for that sh#@!"

But seriously, thanks Bernd! In fact, I believe to understand and agree with all of it.
Luckily I don't really have to learn or memorize it anymore because my native language center knows the usage very well -- only with the finer details of grammar and terminology I feel a bit of haze and fog coming on ...   That's the benefit of aging!


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## bearded

manfy said:


> But seriously, thanks Bernd! In fact, I believe to understand and agree with all of it


Dem schließe ich mich an!


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## Schlabberlatz

It seems that both versions (adjective or adverb) are possible in English.
From the OED:
(1) _1888 Henley_ Bk. Verses 118 _Clear shine_ the hills.
(2) _1815 Scott_ Guy M. xxvii, It must surely have been a light in the hut of a forester, for it _shone too steadily_ to be the glimmer of an ignis fatuus.

But "clear" in (1) can also be called an adverb: "Clear is not originally an adverb, and its adverbial use arose partly
out of the predicative use of the adjective, as in “the sun shines clear”"


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