# Der in Ungnade gefallene Onkel



## Dupon

Der einst einflussreiche und zuletzt in Ungnade _*gefallene*_ Onkel des nordkoreanischen Machthabers Kim Jong Un, Jang Song Thaek, ist hingerichtet 
worden.

Here "gefallene" is the adjective of "Onkel", does it mean "downfallen" or "falling" in English?

Thanks!!


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## lingpil

"In Ungnade fallen" is a phrase meaning "to fall in disgrace".


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## perpend

I agree with lingpil. It's a slippery slope.


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## Schimmelreiter

Dupon said:


> Der einst einflussreiche und zuletzt in Ungnade _*gefallene*_ Onkel


This is an interesting piece of grammar.

As in English, the past participle of a verb, in principle, is passive voice in meaning. In both languages, exceptions exist to that rule. In English, take for instance _milk gone sour_, where the milk has not *been gone sour but *has *gone sour.

Even the English word _fallen_, which we need here, can be active voice in meaning: _a fallen angel_, i.e. an angel that *has* fallen (from God).

When it comes to the German past participle _gefallen_, we may even expand it further as an attribute _(der zuletzt in Ungnade gefallene Onkel)_, which we can't in English: 
_*the recently fallen-in-disgrace uncle_ is ungrammatical.


So if we are to translate _der zuletzt in Ungnade gefallene Onkel_, we may say
_
the uncle, who has recently fallen in disgrace_

or, should you prefer to use a present participle,

_the uncle, having recently fallen in disgrace_


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> When it comes to the German past participle _gefallen_, we may even expand it further as an attribute _(der zuletzt in Ungnade gefallene Onkel)_, which we can't in English:
> _*the recently fallen-in-disgrace uncle_ is ungrammatical.


Attributive participle phrases are possible in English as well. They are just placed after the head noun.
_Der einst einflussreiche und zuletzt in Ungnade gefallene Onkel = The once influential uncle lately fallen in disgrace._
Irrespective of its idiomaticity or lack thereof, the phrase is certainly grammatically correct.


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf said:


> Attributive participle phrases are possible in English as well. They are just placed after the head noun.
> _Der einst einflussreiche und zuletzt in Ungnade gefallene Onkel = The once influential uncle lately fallen in disgrace._
> Irrespective of its idiomaticity or lack thereof, the phrase is certainly grammatically correct.


Stupid me. Was I not the one that mentioned _milk gone sour_? 
Wasn't I a smart kid, and now I'm progressively Alzheimering.


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## Dan2

Schimmelreiter said:


> now I'm progressively Alzheimering.


But you apparently have enough working cells to have pointed out a very interesting distinction: a fallen uncle is one who _has _fallen, while an arrested/executed/abused/forgiven etc uncle is one who _has been_ arrested/...  This non-passive use of an adjectival past participle seen in the case of "fallen" is not productive: we can't say "a sneezed man" or "a slept cat"; and an eaten chicken is one that _has been_ eaten, not one that _has _eaten.


Schimmelreiter said:


> As in English, the past participle of a verb, in principle, is passive voice in meaning.


This needs to be qualified, doesn't it?  You mean when the past participle is used _adjectivally _(as it was in the OP).  There's nothing passive about the past participles in "I have seen the man"/"Ich habe den Mann gesehen".


> _fallen in disgrace_


I would say that the uncle had "fallen _into _disgrace".  You see, we make this very odd distinction in English between action that occurs _within _a location ("The man fell _in _his bedroom") and action that carries a subject from one location to another ("The meteorite fell thru the roof _into _his bedroom").  I understand, of course, that as Germans you must find this a difficult conceptual distinction.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I would say that the uncle had "fallen _into _disgrace".  You see, we make this very odd distinction in English between action that occurs _within _a location ("The man fell _in _his bedroom") and action that carries a subject from one location to another ("The meteorite fell thru the roof _into _his bedroom").  I understand, of course, that as Germans you must find this a difficult conceptual distinction.


This is a joke, right?  (From all the discussions about _Wechselpräpositionen_, I know you know all too well that we also make that distinction.)


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## ayuda?

lDer einst einflussreiche und zuletzt in Ungnade *gefallene* Onkel des nordkoreanischen Machthabers Kim Jong Un, Jang Song Thaek, ist hingerichtet worden.

_[Schimmelreiter] __…the uncle,who has recently fallen __in__ disgrace _[correct, except for in] 
_[Schimmelreiter] _Wasn't I a smart kid, and now I'm progressively Alzheimering. [funny ]
I don’t think so. You sound pretty sharp to me! As we say: There may be snow on the roof, but there is still a fire in the chimney.

I agree with Dan2 on this point:
…fallen *into* disgrace vs. fallen in disgrace is the way it would be in English. It is a pretty set phrase.

*l**Possible alternative suggested translation:*
The once influential and recently disgraced uncle of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Jang Song Thek, was/has been executed.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> This needs to be qualified, doesn't it?  You mean when the past participle is used _adjectivally _(as it was in the OP).  There's nothing passive about the past participles in "I have seen the man"/"Ich habe den Mann gesehen".


Not any more, but etymologically yes. As the grammaticalization of the periphrastic perfect progressed, the participle lost its original passive meaning (=_I have a man that is a seen one_). But that happened already in VL in Roman times and was transferred into the grammars of Germanic languages a long time ago.


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## bearded

To Schimmelreiter
I would just like to be Alzheimering like you are doing!  Anyhow, with past partciples used as adjectives, I would put it this way:  if the verb is transitive, then the participle is passive (the eaten chicken), if it is intransitive, it is just active (the fallen uncle = the uncle that has fallen). Fallen is active because the verb cannot have a direct object: you cannot 'fall' your uncle.


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> This is a joke, right?


How many smiley-faces did I need to append <smiley-face>?  (Or is that the wrong symbol?  My education was pre-emoticon...) Seriously, I was just getting back at you all for all the patronizing lecturing to *us *about the locative-vs-directional distinction.


bearded man said:


> Anyhow, with past partciples used as adjectives, I would put it this way:  if the verb is transitive, then the participle is passive (the eaten chicken), *if it is intransitive*, it is just active (the fallen uncle = the uncle that has fallen). Fallen is active because the verb cannot have a direct object: you cannot 'fall' your uncle.


Right, but just to clarify: if it is intransitive, as a rule you simply can't use the past participle adjectivally _at all_ (see my "sneezed man" example above).  "fallen" is an exception (there are probably others).

EDIT: How could I have responded to you in this context, barbuto, without observing that "bearded" in "bearded man" is a man who *is *bearded (a sein-, not a werden-passive, but still a passive).


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## Schimmelreiter

Dan2 said:


> fallen _into _disgrace


Had I but listened to my gut feeling! 
I'd already typed _into_ when I asked myself whether there might be a set phrase. I swear I will never ever consult Leo again, which, when you search for _Ungnade fallen_, *only* lists _fall in disgrace_: http://dict.leo.org/#/search=ungnade fallen&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=off


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## Dan2

Schimmelreiter said:


> Had I but listened to my gut feeling!
> I'd already typed _into_ when I asked myself whether there might be a set phrase. I swear I will never ever consult Leo again, which, when you search for _Ungnade fallen_, *only* lists _fall in disgrace_: http://dict.leo.org/#/search=ungnade fallen&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=off


Two points:

1. "fall in disgrace" is certainly possible, if it has a locative interpretation: A soldier killed by the enemy while acting in a cowardly manner can be said to have fallen (died) in disgrace.  This fact makes the phrase sound OK, even if it's not the best translation of the leo.org German phrase.

2. Colloquially, "into" is often replaced by "in" (so "He ran in the house" is ambiguous).  For me at least, that usage of "in" is simply not possible in a formal/literary context like "fall into disgrace".

Bottom line: It was a minor error, and one I wouldn't have mentioned if it didn't parallel, for English in place of German, what may well be the single-most-discussed topic in the German forum, dative-vs-accusative after the "Wechselpräpositionen".


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## berndf

I find this view a bit exaggerated. In the history of modern English there are too many examples of literary use of "in" in the accusative sense to call it purely colloquial. The OED lists some.


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## Dan2

Offhand I can't think of non-colloquial uses of "in" for "into" (but I'll keep my ears open).  For ex., I can't imagine anyone with any feel for English saying that a word "has fallen in disuse" instead of "into disuse".  Even on the colloquial level, sentences such as "They drove in the city" (in the "in die Stadt" reading) or "They walked in a dangerous situation" seem unlikely to me.  At the moment I don't know why these everyday sentences sound so much worse with "in" than "He ran in the house" or "They got in the car" (both of which also sound fine and colloquial with "into").

As for the OED citations, sometimes you see things in literature that ordinary people wouldn't say.  But I would be interested to see some examples; maybe there's a class of cases I'm overlooking.


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## berndf

I still have an old fashioned paper copy of the OED. I am currently traveling. I will come back to you later.


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## bearded

To Dan2
Re: bearded.  Thank you for your (as usual) fine remarks.  I am not 100% sure, though, that 'bearded' meaning ,mit Bart versehen' is really passive.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> To Dan2
> Re: bearded.  Thank you for your (as usual) fine remarks.  I am not 100% sure, though, that 'bearded' meaning ,mit Bart versehen' is really passive.


Sure it is. You (the one with the beard) are the patient of the action "mit Bart versehen" and not the agent. The agent is whoever gave you the beard (God, nature, ...?).


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## Schimmelreiter

bearded man said:


> I am not 100% sure, though, that 'bearded' meaning ,mit Bart versehen' is really passive.


But?
outpaced by berndf


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## bearded

berndf said:


> Sure it is. You (the one with the beard) are the patient of the action "mit Bart versehen" and not the agent. The agent is whoever gave you the beard (God, nature, ...?).


 Thank you, I also considered that, but my doubt arises from the fact that 'bearded' corresponds to (not existing) beardy (=bärtig), namely a quality I possess. In this case, the adjectival nature of the word would prevail over the verb nature. Very different from 'the eaten chicken'.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Thank you, I also considered that, but my doubt arises from the fact that 'bearded' corresponds to (not existing) beardy (=bärtig), namely a quality I possess. In this case, the adjectival nature of the word would prevail over the verb nature. Very different from 'the eaten chicken'.


Bearded is the ppl of an existing transitive verb _to beard_ meaning _to furnish with a beard_, as you correctly wrote yourself (_mit Bart versehen_).

It does correspond to German _bärtig_ (_*beardy_) but to _bebärted, _ppl. of a possible* transitive verb _bebärten_ with passive meaning.
_______________________
* "Possible" means here that the word is not normally found in dictionaries but occasionally occurs in literature and is immediately understandable because it follows a productive pattern of transitive verb formation (cf. _behaart_).


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Offhand I can't think of non-colloquial uses of "in" for "into" (but I'll keep my ears open).  For ex., I can't imagine anyone with any feel for English saying that a word "has fallen in disuse" instead of "into disuse".  Even on the colloquial level, sentences such as "They drove in the city" (in the "in die Stadt" reading) or "They walked in a dangerous situation" seem unlikely to me.  At the moment I don't know why these everyday sentences sound so much worse with "in" than "He ran in the house" or "They got in the car" (both of which also sound fine and colloquial with "into").
> 
> As for the OED citations, sometimes you see things in literature that ordinary people wouldn't say.  But I would be interested to see some examples; maybe there's a class of cases I'm overlooking.


Here are a few samples of literary and journalistic use (avoiding poetic texts) I compiled from Google searches. I agree that _into_ is generally the preferred variant to express the destinative meaning, these samples are IMHO sufficient evidence that the destinative _in _is not exclusively colloquial:

1711, the  2nd Earl of Marchmont in a letter to the king (personal letter)
_It has never been your Majesty's custom to let your servants fall in disgrace, if they are fit for their employments, without some evident miscarriage, which certainly has been a prudent and gracious way, which your Majesty has always followed.
_
1886, The Magazine of American History (journal)
_I allude to the celebrated scandal growing out of the sale by Sir John A. Macdonald of the charter of the C. P. R.' s, his acceptance of a sum approximating $360,000, to be used, and which was proven to have been used, as a huge bribery fund, and his consequent fall in disgrace.
_
1888, The Spectator, volume 61 (journal)
_Any Government that attempted to stifle adequate debate in such a case would fall in disgrace, and ought to fall in disgrace.
_
1897, Grace Livingston Hill, In the Way (novel)
_And now to fall in disgrace before some country loafers who only wanted to laugh and jeer at her at best — to fall when there was real peril, when she was far from home and — oh, that dog!
_
1990, William Holladay Nixon, Strategic Compromise (novel; the author is a former political speech writer)
_While his own political career might come to an end after the revelations about his assistant's involvement with the GRU, Ashworth knew he would not fall in disgrace, especially if he could get the briefing book back to the President...
_
1997, Roland N. Stromberg, Europe in the Twentieth Century (scientific monograph) 
_Verdun sealed the fate of General Falkenhayn, who became one of many high military leaders to fall in disgrace during the war._


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## ayuda?

*fall in disgrace vs. fall into disgrace:*
I just googled it also. Apparently, there are no absolutes here; both are acceptable in the different English dictionaries I looked it up in.
We don’t have anything as authoritative or definitive as the _Duden_ or the _Real Academia Española. _So it is a matter of choice, I guess.
I googled it in quotes, too, and both yielded  enough results. Which is more common, I don’t know.
Maybe it is regional or personal, but no matter how many times I go over it, _fall in disgrace_ sounds awkward to me because it could be ambiguous.


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