# Russian causative



## tarinoidenkertoja

What's the russian construction for causative verbs? (If there is a general one like in english "to make/have +person+ verb")


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## morzh

tarinoidenkertoja said:


> What's the russian construction for causative verbs? (If there is a general one like in english "to make/have +person+ verb")



1. Заставить (to compel someone to do something).
Я заставлю его это сделать (I'll compel him to do it). But this is too strong and means some forcing of the action.
2. General "make/have one do something" does not lend itself to straightforward translation too well.

Examples:

I'll have him check that for you.

There is no good way to say it. So, it may be "I'll ask him" - "Я его попрошу это проверить".
Or "Я сделаю так, что он это проверит". This is very clumsy, but seems to be the only way to directly translate causative. Literally: "I will do somefthing so he checks it for you".
Or "Я обеспечу проверку им этого". Again, kind of clumsy, but possible. Literally - "I will make sure he checks it".
Or "Я ему скажу, чтобы он это проверил" - "I will tell him to check it".


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## carsten

There are also a few special words, for example поить "make drink/give drink" (causative from пить "drink").


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## Maroseika

carsten said:


> There are also a few special words, for example поить "make drink/give drink" (causative from пить "drink").



I don't think we may call it "causative from пить". Поить and пить are quite different words and not connected with each other directly, just derivating from one source, but different even in Old-Slavonic (поить <*роjь, пить < питиѥ - beverage).


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## idialegre

What, then, is the correct way to say, for example, "I had my hair cut yesterday" or "I'm having a dress made especially for my daughter's wedding"?


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## Maroseika

idialegre said:


> What, then, is the correct way to say, for example, "I had my hair cut yesterday" or "I'm having a dress made especially for my daughter's wedding"?



I'm afraid this has nothing to do with causative. You probably should have asked this in the separate thread.


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## idialegre

Maroseika, thank you for the quick reply, but I must disagree. It is precisely constructions like the following that "causative" refers to:

I had my hair cut.
I had a dress made.
I had John paint the house.

There is also a causative construction with "make."

I made John paint the house.

Of course, I am referring only to English here, and make no claim to any understanding of what "causative" might refer to in Russian. That's what I am trying to find out.   But since the original post was in English, I think my post is exactly in line with this thread.


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## Maroseika

Thank you for clarification, idialegre. I beleive a causative is just the same in any language, it's nothing but a term.
According  to this said English construction is really causative.

But what is the cause in _I had my hair cut_ (Меня постригли)? I cannot see here anything but a simple narration.


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## elemika

Hi all! 


morzh said:


> "Я сделаю так, что он это проверит".
> This is very clumsy, but seems to be the only way to directly translate  causative. Literally: "I will do somefthing so he checks it for you".


In the 60th it was proposed to check causativity of the Russian verbs by the paraphrase "сделать так, чтобы...".
And there is a lot of ways to express it in Russian.
An example:
_I'll make him laugh_.
Я заставлю его рассмеяться.
Я сделаю так, чтобы он рассмеялся.
Он у меня рассмеётся!
Я его рассмешу!
Благодаря мне он будет смеяться!
Из-за меня он будет смеяться!
.........



idialegre said:


> There is also a causative construction with "make."
> 
> _I made John paint the house._


  Я сделаю так, чтобы Джон покрасил дом.
  Я заставлю Джона покрасить дом.
  По моему настоянию / просьбе / указанию Джон покрасит дом.
  Благодаря мне/ моей настойчивости / моему вмешательству /моему совету Джон покрасит дом.
  Из-за меня Джон покрасит дом.

The choice depends on the context

There is а great number of causative verbs which make the construction shorter / more elegant, but not all the verbs:
Сделал так, что он радовался = Обрадовал
Сделал так, что он ушёл = Прогнал
Сделал так, что они стали злыми = Обозлил
Сделал так, что они стали кудрявыми = Завил


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## idialegre

Elemika's answer is very enlightening, but I am still curious if Russian has a basic causative construction as in English.
A very simple English sentence is "I'll have it done." This is a causative construction, even though it does not specify _what _I will have done (e.g., I will have the house painted) or _by whom _I will have it done (e.g., I will have John do it) or _how _I will have it done (e.g., I will pay for it, I will force someone to do it, etc.) (To highlight the causative nature, one could even rephrase it as, "I will cause it to be done." Only nobody really speaks that way.) 

My question is, how would this best be said in Russian? 

"я сделаю так, чтобы кто-нибудь сделал это." ???

"я сделаю так, чтобы это будет сделанным." ???

Is there a simple way to say it in Russian?


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## morzh

idialegre said:


> Elemika's answer is very enlightening, but I am still curious if Russian has a basic causative construction as in English.
> A very simple English sentence is "I'll have it done." This is a causative construction, even though it does not specify _what _I will have done (e.g., I will have the house painted) or _by whom _I will have it done (e.g., I will have John do it) or _how _I will have it done (e.g., I will pay for it, I will force someone to do it, etc.) (To highlight the causative nature, one could even rephrase it as, "I will cause it to be done." Only nobody really speaks that way.)
> 
> My question is, how would this best be said in Russian?
> 
> "я сделаю так, чтобы кто-нибудь сделал это." ???
> 
> "я сделаю так, чтобы это будет сделанным." ???
> 
> Is there a simple way to say it in Russian?




No there's no good way of doing it. Like I said before. You need to restructure the way of thinking a bit. It is purely English (don't know about the rest of the European languages) construct, the "I will make him do...".
You need to think in Russian constructs.

If you want to say "I'll make him do it", you have to understand what situation it is applicable to, and then look for an (the) accepted way of verbalizing the thought.

For example, if you are in the military, you will order someone to do it, and this is the way of making someone do something.
So it becomes

"Я отдам приказ, чтобы это сделали" - I will give the order to do it.
"Я прикажу ему, и он это сделает". - I will order hm to do it.

However, in the civilian environment it is next to unacceptable.

So, if you want to assure someone you will make something happen, by telling someone (or even ordering someone, but in the civilians' way), it becomes

Я прослежу за тем, чтобы это сделали (чтобы он это сделал) - I will make sure it is done (I will stay on top of this).
Я скажу ему, чтобы он это сделал (I will tell him to do it).
Я заставлю его это сделать (I will force him to do it).
Я попрошу его это сделать (I will ask him to do it).

All these are various versions of "make him do it" projected onto different situations/environments. All of them also result in "making him do it". But the flavors are different. They reflect the working environment, the chain of command, the personal relations between the "asker" and the "askee" 

There is no universal translation, and not in the structurally matching form (that is, "making someone do it").


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## idialegre

Thank you, morzh! Clear and very helpful answer!


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## Icetrance

Is the following sentence really grammatically correct in Russian?  _Я сделаю так, что он это провери*т*_. Shouldn't it read: 
_"Я сделаю так, что__бы он это провери_*л" *?


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## ahvalj

Icetrance said:


> Is the following sentence really grammatically correct in Russian?  _Я сделаю так, что он это провери*т*_. Shouldn't it read:
> _"Я сделаю так, что__бы он это провери_*л" *?


Well, both variants are OK. But, as it has been discussed here two years ago, there is unfortunately no neutral way to express the Causative in Russian. At all. Your example looks more or less analogous to the English Causative "I will make him check" but in reality it is not: the Russian phrase has an additional meaning "I will arrange the circumstances in such a way that he will check".


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## Ёж!

ahvalj said:


> But, as it has been discussed here two years ago, there is unfortunately no neutral way to express the Causative in Russian. At all.


   Well, but causation cannot be neutral, in a sense: it always involves some human interaction, which is to be judged, evaluated and classified. So, I do not see anything unfortunate about it. It's like the grammar of the sense: some meanings cannot be expressed without other meanings being expressed together. In Russian, things that involve emotional or evaluational interaction tend to follow this way, or so it looks to me. We judge, evaluate, and classify.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> Well, but causation cannot be neutral, in a sense: it always involves some human interaction, which is to be judged, evaluated and classified. So, I do not see anything unfortunate about it. It's like the grammar of the sense: some meanings cannot be expressed without other meanings being expressed together. In Russian, things that involve emotional or evaluational interaction tend to follow this way, or so it looks to me.


I can imagine zillions of cases when causation does not involve emotional or evaluational interaction. Causativity is just a grammatical category like any other and it is always better to have a richer language. Unfortunately, the problem is much wider, and comparing to the average Eurasian level, the West and East Slavic verbal system is painfully limited.


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## Ёж!

ahvalj said:


> Causativity is just a grammatical category like any other and it is always better to have a richer language.


     Indeed causativity is. And, when things cause things, it does not even involve any human interaction. But such cases, which are zillion and more, are much rarer than the cases when people cause people or people cause things; the latter situations are not only more frequent, they, in their peculiarity, are considered more important as well, unless you write something technical about machines or something abstract about society. The situations of causation with live people in action involve human interaction; theoretically it does not entail that one _must_ express its evaluation, but one surely _may_, and in our case this _may_ transforms into _always does_.

More richness means more options, more options means more choice, more choice means less usability.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> More richness means more options, more options means more choice, more choice means less usability.


Actually, we're discussing here a contrary case: the English construction "make + something/somebody + Infinitive" is more generic than its Russian analogs where you either have to introduce some degree of emotional interaction (заставить петь) or (in most cases) have to avoid the causative altogether. Very many languages have a plain functioning causative and it provides the speaker a simpler and more straightforward way to express his thoughts.


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## Ёж!

Contrary means the same.  The perception of what richness is useful and what richness is hindering depends on what side one is looking from, as well as the notion of when one needs more straightforwardness or more complexity. What I'm saying is that you can't have an ideal language, so the rules with 'always better' do not work.


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## ahvalj

By the way, we had a functioning pattern to form causative verbs in the early Proto-Slavic: o-vowel in the root and the -ei/ī- suffix — in the modern language the few remaining verb pairs are, e. g. лечь/ложить, сесть/садить («а» from a long «о»), быть/-бавить (the same), вертеть/воротить etc. After this pattern became unproductive (several thousand years ago), the language did not try to develop any other way to form generic causatives. Абыдна...


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## Ёж!

But, I assume, it worked only with non-transitive verbs, right? Otherwise, where it put the direct object and the subject of the source verb?


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> Contrary means the same.  The perception of what richness is useful and what richness is hindering depends on what side one is looking from, as well as the notion of when one needs more straightforwardness or more complexity. What I'm saying is that you can't have an ideal language, so the rules with 'always better' do not work.


I. e. «мне не жмёт цепь, на которой я сижу.» ©


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> But, I assume, it worked only with non-transitive verbs, right? Otherwise, where it put the direct object and the subject of the source verb?


Yes, only with non-transitives.


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## Ёж!

I.e., there are no worlds without chains. See, having a grammatical feature is chains just as well as not having it. You _must_ use the feature. You _must_ think of it. It _must_ have been developed.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> I.e., there are no worlds without chains. See, having a grammatical feature is chains just as well as not having it.


Dialectics detected. Never liked philosophy.


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## Ёж!

ahvalj said:


> Never liked philosophy.


Looks quite the contrary.  Are you not suggesting some best world language, the best of the bests? I say, such language cannot exist.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> Looks quite the contrary.  Are you not suggesting the best world language, the best of the bests? I say, such language cannot exist.


I had complained about the North Slavic verbal system being much poorer than the average for Eurasia. It would be fine to fix this first.


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## Ёж!

It won't work well with transitive verbs. Just won't.

   As for intransitive verbs, they seem to be occasionally used in transitive positions: «Я тебя пойду!». Extremely marginal, but not totally out of the line in Russian... It seems (at least to me) that this works better when the genuinely transitive sense is also there: «А уж потом я его поезжу...» (= «он меня будет возить»). *

  * for interested parties: please notice that it's not standard language anyway.


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## Icetrance

Ёж! said:


> «Я тебя пойду!».


 
And what does that mean?


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## Icetrance

ahvalj said:


> Well, both variants are OK. But, as it has been discussed here two years ago, there is unfortunately no neutral way to express the Causative in Russian. At all. Your example looks more or less analogous to the English Causative "I will make him check" but in reality it is not: the Russian phrase has an additional meaning "I will arrange the circumstances in such a way that he will check".



In English, we're more likely to say "I will have him check [to see if there is any mail]. "Make" is more forceful. Although "to make someone do something" is sometimes less strong than others. Again, it all depends on the context.


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## Ёж!

Icetrance said:


> And what does that mean?


 Creative language use. It is supposed to mean 'I will force you to walk". Sounds almost like broken language, and for many (not me) there is no 'almost' here, just broken. I'm just trying to imagine how a 'fix' that ahvalj proposes could look in practice...


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## John Allison

Ёж! said:


> As for intransitive verbs, they seem to be occasionally used in transitive positions: «Я тебя пойду!». Extremely marginal, but not totally out of the line in Russian...


I would definitely not understand if someone said to me something like this. Sounds extremely unnatural even in a given context.


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## Ёж!

Thank you. I'd be also interested to hear from you how the second phrase (with «поезжу») sounds for you. Thanks!


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## John Allison

I think I'd look pretty puzzled if I heard it as a separate phrase (that's how I actually looked when I first read it), but I think it's understandable in a context.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> I'm just trying to imagine how a 'fix' that ahvalj proposes could look in practice...


The easiest way would be to use some verb to calque the construction «faire chanter»/"make sing". Though strangely, after 100 years of Russian/French bilingualism in the 18–19th centuries, nothing like this appeared in the language. Strangely, because in other areas calques do appear. For example, the classical construction "Accusativus cum infinitivo", remodelled in Russian (like in English) through a more grammatically elegant "Accusativus cum participio" («je l'ai vu se promener» > "I saw him walking"/«я видел его гуляющим»), is slowly gaining popularity, mainly through translations. The same is true for the Gerund: the construction "Preposition + Verbal noun" is now more and more often used instead of the older "Preposition + чтобы + Infinitive" («для закрытия дверей лифта» instead of «чтобы закрыть двери лифта»). Of course, these new constructions, being calques, still have to be fully digested by the language to sound natural in any context, but the tendency is clear.


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## Ёж!

ahvalj said:


> The easiest way would be to use some verb to calque the construction «faire chanter»/"make sing".


 This cannot work, and I see nothing strange in that it does not work. We have so much accustomed that every language construct — including, to the vast degree, lexicon, but not only: also such fine-grained grammatical constructs as verbal aspects and word order, — is set up for reporting people's feelings, views and reactions about things and people, that we expect the same from anything that we hear. So, «я видел его гуляющим» is fine, although maybe too 'cervellistic', because it reports on how I perceived him, but «он сделал меня выпить вино» feels 'unlikely' to the degree it feels 'impossible', i.e. highly artificial and unneeded: the hearer has never heard nor imagined that someone could account on what happened and omit how it was or could be felt, so he does not believe his ears now.


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## ahvalj

Ёж! said:


> This cannot work, and I see nothing strange in that it does not work. We have so much accustomed that every language construct — including, to the vast degree, lexicon, but not only: also such fine-grained grammatical constructs as verbal aspects and word order, — is set up for reporting people's feelings, views and reactions about things and people, that we expect the same from anything that we hear. So, «я видел его гуляющим» is fine, although maybe too 'cervellistic', because it reports on how I perceived him, but «он сделал меня выпить вино» feels 'unlikely' to the degree it feels 'impossible', i.e. highly artificial and unneeded: the hearer has never heard nor imagined that someone could account on what happened and omit how it was or could be felt, so he does not believe his ears now.


Very many grammatical tools in various languages originate from separate words with specialized meaning, which becomes more and more abstract with time, e. g. the Russian «стану петь» < "I will stand [and] sing". As far as I imagine, both in Romance and Germanic the present-day causative constructions are of pretty recent origin with no analogs in Latin or Gothic.


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## Ёж!

In fact, the construction «из-за меня + <clause>», suggested by elemika, does the job for you. Seldom used, yet sounds very natural. «Из-за него я выпил больше вина, чем следует».


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> e. g. the Russian «стану петь» < "I will stand [and] sing".



It's very unlikely that Russian стать = "to begin" originates from Russian стать = "to stand".  According to Vasmer,  the same relation between the two meanings of the cognates of this verb can be seen in many other IE languages.


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> It's very unlikely that Russian стать = "to begin" originates from Russian стать = "to stand".  According to Vasmer,  the same relation between the two meanings of the cognates of this verb can be seen in many other IE languages.


I know nothing about the antiquity of the meaning "to begin" in this verb. Pokorny's Indo-European dictionary (http://yadi.sk/d/MmUoPo3X7k1wy — page 2906) gives only the meaning "stehen, stellen" with definitely secondary meanings found across the languages. My copy of Vasmer (volume III page 748) says nothing about "to begin" either. The same is true for the academic Old Slavonic dictionary (http://yadi.sk/d/xHESBTXu7k36q — pdf pages 2439–2440). The modern Russian itself shows hints that this meaning is secondary since there is «начать петь» but not «стать петь».


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> It's very unlikely that Russian стать = "to begin" originates from Russian стать = "to stand".  According to Vasmer,  the same relation between the two meanings of the cognates of this verb can be seen in many other IE languages.


By the way, besides «стану петь» there is a rarer and less grammaticalized «пойду петь». Тенденция, однако...


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## ahvalj

The Russian example with «стать» is rare because of the synthetic nature of the language, but very many languages have extensive systems of semigrammaticalized verbal pairs, of which some become with time full-fledged grammatical units. The abovementioned Russian «пойду петь» has a grammaticalized Romance correspondence «je vais chanter»/«voy a cantar» etc. Likewise, the verb "to stand" forms Continuous tenses in Spanish and Italian: «estoy cantando»/«sto cantando».


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> I know nothing about the antiquity of the meaning "to begin" in this verb. Pokorny's Indo-European dictionary (http://yadi.sk/d/MmUoPo3X7k1wy — page 2906) gives only the meaning "stehen, stellen" with definitely secondary meanings found across the languages. My copy of Vasmer (volume III page 748) says nothing about "to begin" either. The same is true for the academic Old Slavonic dictionary (http://yadi.sk/d/xHESBTXu7k36q — pdf pages 2439–2440). The modern Russian itself shows hints that this meaning is secondary since there is «начать петь» but not «стать петь».



I did not say anything about antiquity, I'd rather call it same logic: to stand in order to start doing smth. Anyway:

Фасмер: 
стать - ...Родственно лит. stóti, stóju "приступать, становиться", лтш. stât "становиться".
стану - ... сербохорв. ста̏ти, ста̏не̑м "стать, встать; остановиться; стать, начать; стоить", словен. státi, stȃnem "стать, настать",...ср. с др.-прусск. postānimai "мы станем".

Черных:
Латыш. stat - стать, становиться,


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## ahvalj

Sorry for so many posts: ideas come one by one. In Spanish at least there is a construction «estoy por cantar» — something like "I am about to sing" with a kind of future meaning. The Slavic infinitive continues the former Dative of the ancient verbal noun, so that «стану петь» is almost identical to this Spanish construction. That means of course that my original analysis of it as "stand [and] sing" is wrong and historically this construction meant literally something like "stand to sing, stand for singing".

The Spanish «estar» nowadays means "to be" but this meaning is a secondary development from the Latin "to stand".


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> I did not say anything about antiquity, I'd rather call it same logic: to stand in order to start doing smth. Anyway:
> 
> Фасмер:
> стать - ...Родственно лит. stóti, stóju "приступать, становиться", лтш. stât "становиться".
> стану - ... сербохорв. ста̏ти, ста̏не̑м "стать, встать; остановиться; стать, начать; стоить", словен. státi, stȃnem "стать, настать",...ср. с др.-прусск. postānimai "мы станем".
> 
> Черных:
> Латыш. stat - стать, становиться,


All these are derived and occasional meanings. Otherwise, see my million posts above with Romance examples.


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## Ёж!

ahvalj said:


> Very many grammatical tools in various languages originate from separate words with specialized meaning, which becomes more and more abstract with time, e. g. the Russian «стану петь» < "I will stand [and] sing". As far as I imagine, both in Romance and Germanic the present-day causative constructions are of pretty recent origin with no analogs in Latin or Gothic.


  The question is not about technical feasibility; if some development is feasible, but natives can't feel like developing it (because, in view of the other language constructions and the natives' overall language experience, these phrases would mean something odd to them or are not needed in life), then this feasible development is still impossible. And if the natives of the language could feel like developing it, then it would be quite a different language.


ahvalj said:


> That means of course that my original analysis of it as "stand [and] sing" is wrong and historically this construction meant literally something like "stand to sing, stand for singing".


   To my ears, not only historically; the link is [still] felt. The phrase means not just "I shall sing", but "I will sing", i.e. "I'll stand into the situation for singing voluntarily".


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## ahvalj

Concerning the Spanish «estoy por cantar» — I now think it is most probably unrelated to our topic and is a more recent formation, with «estar» used in its newer Spanish meaning "to be", so the similarity with «стану петь» must be only formal. Anyway, all this had the purpose to illustrate the development of grammaticalized constructions from the originally simply lexical word combinations.


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> All these are derived and occasional meanings.


I don't think this is just occasional coincidence. But I'm afraid we both lack for the objective proofs, so better stop in this point.


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## ahvalj

Maroseika said:


> I don't think this is just occasional coincidence. But I'm afraid we both lack for the objective proofs, so better stop in this point.


To clarify our positions: I think that the verb «стать» has a basic vocabulary meaning "to stand" with some obvious secondary developments, but that the meaning "to begin" in «стану петь» is confined to such word combinations and most probably developed within them ("I will stand to sing" > "I will start singing/I will sing"), whereas you state that this second meaning existed before these constructions acquired the future meaning. To prove the latter you have to find cases when the meaning "to begin" exists in the verb «стать» in other contexts.


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## Maroseika

ahvalj said:


> To clarify our positions: I think that the verb «стать» has a basic vocabulary meaning "to stand" with some obvious secondary developments, but that the meaning "to begin" in «стану петь» is confined to such word combinations and most probably developed within them ("I will stand to sing" > "I will start singing/I will sing"), whereas you state that this second meaning existed before these constructions acquired the future meaning. To prove the latter you have to find cases when the meaning "to begin" exists in the verb «стать» in other contexts.



No, I only meant that Russian стать - "to begin" and "to become" have developed in pre-Russian and maybe even in Proto-Slavic epoch.


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## bragpipes

@ahvalj 

This example here: «я видел его гуляющим» is Accusativus cum participio, correct?
How is the "Accusativus cum infinitivo" created in Russian?  _я видел его гулять?_


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## ahvalj

Instrumentalis cum participio. If I am not mistaken, Slavic has lost the old Accusativus cum participio, and these constructions are just emerging now (especially as calques from English). From the grammatical viewpoint, they are better than the Accusative constructions, since they allow to avoid some ambiguities typical of Latin, e. g. in _я видел его _(Acc.)_ выгуливающим_ (Instr.) _собаку_ (Acc.): Latin will have three Accusatives in a row, something like: _vidēbam eum canem …-ntem _(literally: **_я видел его выгуливающего собаку_).

Accusativus cum Infinitivo is impossible, only cum Participio:_ я видел его гуляющим/гулявшим,_ though these still often sound artificial (this will change in the future).


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## ahvalj

Sorry, a stupid mistake in my post: of course _я видел его гуляющим_ is also Accusativus cum participio, since we have _его_ in the Accusative: the Latin term  is simply not suitable for the Slavic situation (Latin has Acc. + Acc., so no additional specification is required, while Slavic has Acc. + Instr.).


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## ahvalj

ahvalj said:


> If I am not mistaken, Slavic has lost the old Accusativus cum participio, and these constructions are just emerging now (especially as calques from English). From the grammatical viewpoint, they are better than the Accusative constructions, since they allow to avoid some ambiguities typical of Latin, e. g. in _я видел его _(Acc.)_ выгуливающим_ (Instr.) _собаку_ (Acc.): Latin will have three Accusatives in a row, something like: _vidēbam eum canem …-ntem _(literally: **_я видел его выгуливающего собаку_).


It turns out that these Latin-type constructions did exist in the past: _Lunt HG · 2001 · Old Church Slavonic grammar: _143 mentions the following OCS examples:

_sъtvoŗǫ va lovьca člověkomъ_ "I will make you [two] fishers of men" (Acc. Du. … Acc. Du.)
_Simona jegože jimenova Petra_ "Simon, whom he named Peter" (Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg.)
_obrěte otrokovicǫ ležęštǫ na odrě i běsъ jьšьdъšь_ "[she] found the girl lying on the bed and the devil gone out" (Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg.)
_mьněvъša že jь vъ družině sǫštь_ "supposing him to be in the company" (Acc. Sg. … Acc. Sg.).


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## bragpipes

Those examples sound quite unclear to me.   I thought it was just the OCS, but even in BCS "Simona, kojega je imenovao Petra" - it's very fuzzy.   Reading it in BCS, I can't tell who is doing what.

I will make you (two) fishers of men.  To me that looks like "I will make you-two-fishers..."  Not I will make you two (into) fishers.  (Učinit ću vas ribar*ima* ljudi, acc. inst.)

The Latin (and this OCS) method is too ambiguous, even in a rigid word order and fewer subjects/agents like the fishers example.


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