# cмотрит на красивых кукол / красивые куклы



## huey titagrosse

Mod note: The thread is split from here.


is that sentence correct? here's the whole text  Каждое утро Маша идёт  в школу. Чтобы дойти  до школы, ей нужно выйти  из дома в 7.30 и пройти  два квартала, перейти  через мост. Когда она проходит  мимо магазина игрушек, то всегда останавливается и смотрит на красивых кукол. Но долго смотреть она не может, у неё мало времени. Если Маша на улице видит лужу, она никогда не обходит  её. Маша идёт  прямо по луже. Но вот и школа. Маша входит  в школу и идёт прямо в класс.


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## Leikmann

By and Large, the text is fine. It just sounds a bit too educational. I would debate one comma in it but it`s not crucial.

The only thing which is not correct grammatically is `смотрит на красивых кукол`. It should be `на красивЫЕ куклЫ` as `кукла` is an inanimate object. But so many native speakers make this mistake that it sounds nearly natural.

[...]


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## Rosett

[...]

Use of Gen. with "куклы" underlines the fact that kids tend to animate dolls in their mind when playing.


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## Leikmann

Rosett said:


> Use of Gen. with "куклы" underlines the fact that kids tend to animate dolls in their mind when playing.


It is not Genitive. It is a mistake. There should be Accusative
Смотрю на кого? что?
Not на кого? чего?
`На` is not used with Genitive


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## Cheburator

Leikmann said:


> It is not Genitive. It is a mistake. There should be Accusative
> Смотрю на кого? что?
> Not на кого? чего?
> `На` is not used with Genitive



I see no mistake in the sentence "смотрит на красивых кукол". And I could use either as a direct object, with a slight preference for Genitive: Маша любит красивых кукол\красивые куклы и т.п. 
Sorry, but I can't explain this rule as I've never learnt Russian as a foreigner.


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## Rosett

Leikmann said:


> It is not Genitive. It is a mistake. There should be Accusative
> Смотрю на кого? что?
> Not на кого? чего?
> `На` is not used with Genitive


You have to read the posted sentence carefully.  "Use of Gen(itive) with" is different from "it is Gen(itive)."
Please refer to Винительный падеж | Русская грамматика : "Неодушевленные существительные (за исключением 1-го скл. ед.ч.) остаются в базовой (немаркированной) форме, а одушевленные получают окончание родительного падежа. В основе раздельного падежного обозначения объектов может лежать не только одушевленность, как в русском языке, но и другие признаки, например определенность"


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## Drink

The use of the genitive in place of the accusative called the partitive genetive. It means she looks at _some_ dolls, not all the dolls and not any specific dolls.


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## vgiv

Для меня вариант "она смотрит на красивые куклы" с неодушевлённым винительным падежом звучит, почему-то, довольно странно, хотя формально он, вероятно, правилен.


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## Cheburator

Drink said:


> The use of the genitive in place of the accusative called the partitive genetive. It means she looks at _some_ dolls, not all the dolls and not any specific dolls.


You are right, but only 50-60% right. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but actually it could as well mean that she looks at* the* dolls. You could even say "Она смотрит на своих кукол" (She looks at her dolls), and it would even sound much more natural that with Accusative (смотрит на свои куклы). And, vice-versa, you can say with Accusative: "Она смотрит на какие-то куклы" (She looks at some dolls), but with Genitive it's also OK: "Она смотрит на каких-то кукол". I would say that Accusative in all those examples sounds a bit more bookish than Genitive, that's the main difference. And yes, when we use Accusative here without such words as "какой-то", "свой" etc., it tends to mean "the", but when we use Genitive, it can mean either (the or some).


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## Awwal12

2*Rosett*, *Drink*,* Cheburator*
Guys, I don't want to disappoint you, but the trouble is the whole phrase has nothing to do with "genitive in place of accusative". In fact, the both variants are accusative - because the noun кукла may be animate or inanimate, depending on the context. And I hope you realize that for animate nouns accusative plural is always the same as genitive plural.

Trying to replace plural with singular would instantly clarify things, wouldn't it? The whole "genitive in place of accusative" thing relates only to partitive meanings and various negative constructions, but shouldn't have anything to do with "я смотрю на куклы" vs. "я смотрю на кукол"; the only difference here is animativeness. Also try to replace "куклы" with "табуретки" and observe the results. "Я смотрю на табуреток"  would sound outright incorrect, right?


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## Sobakus

As for the Accusative of *куклы*, in my opinion the Genitive form is to be used when talking about toy dolls (those are invariably treated as animate) while the Nominative form _can_ – but not ought to be – used with other kinds of dolls (decorative, artistic, etc). There's no hard link between grammatical animateness and the scientific definition of life (jokes aside, nobody says «мы видим двух бактерий»), thus proposing such a link to postulate that *куклы* objectively has to be inanimate doesn't seem justified to me – it's as much, if not more, about subjective interpretation.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> As for the Accusative of *куклы*, in my opinion the Genitive form is to be used when talking about toy dolls (those are invariably treated as animate) while the Nominative form _can_ – but not ought to be – used with other kinds of dolls (decorative, artistic, etc).


I just hope everyone realizes that here we talk about "morphological nominative" and "morphological genitive" (which technically are both accusative here). 
Note, however, the phrase "играть в куклы". And although "играть в кукол" is also possible, it would mean something totally different: a game where you impersonate some imaginary dolls (surely a pretty weird idea, but nevertheless). The same also applies to other games: играть в солдатики etc.


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## Cheburator

I suppose, in the case of "куклы" we have a word which can be used both as animate and inanimate, without much difference in meaning. It's fun how other words which also mean toys will be used in the same sentence:
Маша смотрит на...
... солдатиков, ванек-встанек, неваляшек, плюшевых медведей, петрушек и т.п. (all are in Gen.; Acc. is impossible; are used as animate nouns)
... машинки, картонные замки, конструкторы и т.п. (all are in Acc.; Gen. is impossible; all are inanimate nouns)
... зайчиков (плюшевых или живых) (Gen.; Acc. is impossible; used as animate noun)
but!
Маша смотрит на солнечных зайчиков / на солнечные зайчики (both Gen. and Acc. are possible, no difference in meaning, the word may be used in either case), and in this phrase we can just say "смотрит на зайчиков / на зайчики" if we understand from the context or situation that we are talking of sunlight spots.

PS
I'm not sure if we could say "смотрит на солдатики", to me it sounds odd, but not impossible.


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## Drink

Cheburator said:


> You are right, but only 50-60% right. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but actually it could as well mean that she looks at* the* dolls. You could even say "Она смотрит на своих кукол" (She looks at her dolls), and it would even sound much more natural that with Accusative (смотрит на свои куклы). And, vice-versa, you can say with Accusative: "Она смотрит на какие-то куклы" (She looks at some dolls), but with Genitive it's also OK: "Она смотрит на каких-то кукол". I would say that Accusative in all those examples sounds a bit more bookish than Genitive, that's the main difference. And yes, when we use Accusative here without such words as "какой-то", "свой" etc., it tends to mean "the", but when we use Genitive, it can mean either (the or some).



You're right, good point. I didn't think it through all the way.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Note, however, the phrase "играть в куклы". And although "играть в кукол" is also possible, it would mean something totally different: a game where you impersonate some imaginary dolls (surely a pretty weird idea, but nevertheless). The same also applies to other games: играть в солдатики etc.


And here goes my "invariably" out the window..  Maybe they're treated as names of the games here (and animateness then serves to distinguish playing with toys from impersonation).


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## huey titagrosse

thankyou everyone for your responses.


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## Ben Jamin

Awwal12 said:


> I just hope everyone realizes that here we talk about "morphological nominative" and "morphological genitive" (which technically are both accusative here).
> Note, however, the phrase "играть в куклы". And although "играть в кукол" is also possible, it would mean something totally different: a game where you impersonate some imaginary dolls (surely a pretty weird idea, but nevertheless). The same also applies to other games: играть в солдатики etc.


Wouldn't it be easier to say just: "the ending of genitive and accusative is the same for some categories of nouns". I have never heard about "morphological genitive" (or any other declension case whatsoever). Does this exist in Russian grammar, or are you inventing new terms?


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## Awwal12

Ben Jamin said:


> Wouldn't it be easier to say just: "the ending of genitive and accusative is the same for some categories of nouns". I have never heard about "morphological genitive" (or any other declension case whatsoever). Does this exist in Russian grammar, or are you inventing new terms?


You're obviously right, it's the normal and most logical terminology. I just tried to shape the phrase of Sobakus into a more acceptable way; plus the animate accusative in Russian historically originates from the genitive case anyway.


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## Drink

Awwal12 said:


> You're obviously right, it's the normal and most logical terminology. I just tried to shape the phrase of Sobakus into a more acceptable way; plus the animate accusative in Russian historically originates from the genitive case anyway.



I personally think that the most natural way to describe it is that in certain circumstances (i.e. for masculine nouns ending in a consonant, masculine adjectives, plural nouns and adjectives, and for feminine nouns ending in -ь), the genitive is used in place of the accusative when the referent is animate. I'm pretty sure that's how most native speakers understand it anyway.


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## Awwal12

Drink said:


> I personally think that the most natural way to describe it is that in certain circumstances (i.e. for masculine and plural nouns and adjectives and for feminine nouns ending in -ь), the genitive is used in place of the accusative.


Well, at least most scholars would disagree.  In certain circumstances (syntagms) one case indeed may replace another. But a noun with its whole declension paradigm is not a "circumstance". It can be put into the same cases as any other noun in the language, into all the cases we can find in it; but some cases may be morphologically identical.
In Russian there is a lot of identical inflexions with different meanings; if we would unite them under single cathegories, it would only complicate the picture (and the scientific description is always the *simplest* one). Should I say that we don't have accusative plural in Russian at all, or that 2nd declension nouns don't have accusative either (because all that doesn't have specific, inherent morphological means of expression)? Well, I doubt that would be productive. Accusative plural uses nominative-like inflections in one paradigms and genitive-like inflexions in other paradigms, but does that consistently in the same syntactial circumstances, which pretty much makes a case (whose very existance is, by the way, verified in singular forms).





Drink said:


> I'm pretty sure that's how most native speakers understand it anyway.


I'm pretty sure that "most native speakers" learn the definition of cases in school only, and those are the standard six cases from the book (while in fact Russian has at least ten).


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## Sobakus

I would simply say that the Genitive takes on the role of the Accusative in those cases. This, as I feel it, is clearly different from homomorphic flections that are understood as being coincidentally the same but originally different; with 2-nd decl. Accusative Sg. (and with Acc. Pl. in other declensions, as illustrated in this thread), you can technically make the same noun animate or inanimate by choosing to use the Nom. or the Gen. to express it, and that to me is good evidence that there's no inherently Accusative form for those nouns at all.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> I would simply say that the Genitive takes on the role of the Accusative in those cases. This, as I feel it, is clearly different from homomorphic flections that are understood as being coincidentally the same but originally different; with 2-nd decl. Accusative Sg. (and with Acc. Pl. in other declensions, as illustrated in this thread), you can technically make the same noun animate or inanimate by choosing to use the Nom. or the Gen. to express it, and that to me is good evidence that there's no inherently Accusative form for those nouns at all.


By your logics, we might as well say that "мо*ей* собак*ой*" and "мо*им* кот*ом*" stand in two different cases. How would you prove it wrong?  How would you define and identify a case in general?


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## Drink

Why do we say высокий дом, but высокого парня in the accusative? Is it because these are actually two different adjectives with different declensions, one used only with inanimate nouns, and the other only with animate nouns? Or is because парня is really just the genitive case replacing the accusative and the adjective simply agrees with the case of the noun as everywhere else? I prefer the latter as the simpler explanantion.


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## Awwal12

Drink said:


> Why do we say высокий дом, but высокого парня in the accusative? Is it because these are actually two different adjectives with different declensions, one used only with inanimate nouns, and the other only with animate nouns? Or is because парня is really just the genitive case replacing the accusative and the adjective simply agrees with the case of the noun as everywhere else? I prefer the latter as the simpler explanantion.


Except it is not simpler at all, since it implies that some nouns may have some cases while others haven't them at all. That is, instead of filling the cells in some universal declension table, we would draw a separate (and likely asymmetrical, as in our example) table for each declension paradigm, and, of course, we would complicate the syntactic explanation too, because instead of simple "use accusative here, whatever it is" we would get "and in this precise position these nouns use nominative, those use genitive, and yonder ones are in accusative". Just wonderful.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> By your logics, we might as well say that "мо*ей* собак*ой*" and "мо*им* кот*ом*" stand in two different cases. How would you prove it wrong?  How would you define and identify a case in general?


I would say that if you didn't change the sentence one bit except for replacing one noun phrase for the other, they would stand in the same case. As illustrated by this thread, you can change *the case of the noun* without changing anything else in the sentence, and thus change the noun's animacy. The only way to accommodate for this would be to postulate that there's two versions of every noun in Russian.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> I would say that if you didn't change the sentence one bit except for replacing one noun phrase for the other, they would stand in the same case. As illustrated by this thread, you can change *the case of the noun* without changing anything else in the sentence, and thus change the noun's animacy. The only way to accommodate for this would be to postulate that there's two versions of every noun in Russian.


But it is obviously wrong, since only scattered nouns in Russian can be both animate and inanimate. It's as much incorrect to say "я гляжу на табуреток"  as "я запрягаю лошади" . Hence we return to the discussion above: it's much simpler to slightly increase the number of declension patterns (or even words) than to state that the case is not defined by the syntactic position only but by the combination of it AND the exact noun standing in it.


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## Drink

But you are still saying that there are two copies of each adjective (and determiner and other such things).


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## Awwal12

Drink said:


> But you are still saying that there are two copies of each adjective (and determiner and other such things).


In Russian animacy functions as a sub-gender, which technically means that adjectives have this cathegory too (and agree in that with the nouns), even if it becomes apparent in accusative only.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> But it is obviously wrong, since only scattered nouns in Russian can be both animate and inanimate. It's as much incorrect to say "я гляжу на табуреток"  as "я запрягаю лошади" . Hence we return to the discussion above: it's much simpler to slightly increase the number of declension patterns (or even words) than to state that the case is not defined by the syntactic position only but by the combination of it AND the exact noun standing in it.


It's incorrect epistemologically, not grammatically, and only as long as the author hasn't made it epistemologically correct:

«Я таких шкафов, как ты, ещё не видал»; «Для этого несколько пушек маячили на холмах и, завидев Тигров, начинали разнузданно подмигивать им панорамой, зазывно отставлять станину и вообще привлекать внимание». An ungrammatical sentence would be «Я гляжу на табуретками».

Saying that every noun that has ever been used as both animate and inanimate should be a separate entry in the dictionary is about the same as saying that every possible diminutive should be. Every noun can in principle be made animate or inanimate by changing the grammatical form its Accusative is expressed by as required by the speaker.

I really don't see the problem with saying that not all nouns have all the cases. Only about 200 nouns have the Inessive case in Russian (на свету́, в лесу́), the rest express it using the Prepositional. That's just how the language works: it's asymmetrical, and trying to fit it into some perfectly symmetrical declension table sounds to me like passing the reality through the filter of human psychology and getting a distorted picture.


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