# против такого бы обращения



## pimlicodude

From Solzhenitsyn:


> Да и в самой еврейской интеллигенции уже в конце 60-х годов прозвучали тревожные голоса против такого бы обращения евреев-интеллигентов просто в русских патриотов.


It may seem a simple thing, but the бы here is what I'm focusing on. Такой бы? The бы isn't connected to any verb. Is такой бы a phrase? Or is this short for такого как бы обращения? Why is бы in there?


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## Alabarna

такого бы = такого возможного


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## pimlicodude

Alabarna said:


> такого бы = такого возможного


Thank you, I see now.


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## nizzebro

To me, this construction is something beyond the normal syntax, whatever it is supposed to mean.
The particle бы is for verbs and not anything else.


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## Alabarna

nizzebro said:


> The particle бы is for verbs and not anything else.


Not exactly. See Сослагательное наклонение | Русская грамматика



> К сослагательному наклонению относятся сочетания частицы _бы _(_б_), в том числе в составе союза _чтоб_(_ы_) и устаревших союзов _дабы _и_ кабы_: с формами прошедшего времени глагола (_увидела бы_,_ чтобы увидела_); с инфинитивами (_унести бы_,_ чтобы увидеть_); с предикативами (_надо бы_, _лучше бы_); в составе эллиптических конструкций с существительными в косвенных падежах (_пирожка бы_; _тебя б на мое место_); с причастиями (редко, ненормативно: _показавшийся бы_); с деепричастиями (очень редко, ненормативно: _не достигнув бы цели_); с императивами (очень редко, ненормативно: _случись бы что_).


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## ahvalj

An accepted standard form would be _такого как бы обращения_.

P. S. the use of _бы_ is indeed expanding, and it's generally a good thing. In particular, I like conjunctive participles (_показавшийся бы_ in #5) very much. Also, _дабы_ has been resurrected in the last decades.

[Corrected a typo]


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## pimlicodude

Alabarna said:


> Not exactly. See Сослагательное наклонение | Русская грамматика


But it's odd in the original sentence, as it doesn't fit into any of types of sentences in your source.


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## nizzebro

Alabarna said:


> Not exactly. See Сослагательное наклонение | Русская грамматика


Ok - with verbal forms (including copula),  to be more precise. 
Btw, I cannot see why 'лучше бы' is considered a single whole.


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## pimlicodude

ahvalj said:


> An accepted standard form would be _такого как бы обращения_.
> 
> P. S. the use of _бы_ is indeed expanding, and it's generally a good thing. In particular, I like conjunctive participles (_показавшийся бы_ шт #5) very much. Also, _дабы_ has been resurrected in the last decades.


This is where you find out a language you are learning is an evolving moving target! How fair is that???


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## ahvalj

pimlicodude said:


> This is where you find out a language you are learning is an evolving moving target! How fair is that???


Well, that's how modular languages (agglutinating or analytic ones: i. e. those where each grammatical meaning is expressed by its own affix or auxiliary) normally evolve. In synthetic languages like Russian one typically can't just abstract a part of the word and apply it in a new context. The particle _бы_ being a rare auxiliary element in Russian evolves more freely.

P. S. The English perfect continuous, a very exotic thing cross-linguistically, is a good example: the language had possessed a perfect and a continuous, and at some point speakers started merging formal elements of both, creating a new set of tenses.


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## pimlicodude

ahvalj said:


> Well, that's how modular languages (agglutinating or analytic ones: i. e. those where each grammatical meaning is expressed by its own affix or auxiliary) normally evolve. In synthetic languages like Russian one typically can't just abstract a part of the word and apply it in a new context. The particle _бы_ being a rare auxiliary element in Russian evolves more freely.


Well, maybe you can compare it to the way "have" is spreading in English. I mean the "have" as in "I could have", normally pronounced /əv/ [in my view this "have" should not be pronounced /hæv/ and if we had a spelling reform it could be spelt "'ve"). Many native speakers spell it "of", and this "of" is spreading. Eg. "if he had have done so" (*"if he had of done so")- this is grammatically incorrect as it should be "if he had done so", but the /əv/ has been reinterpreted as a kind of perfective particle that is then overused. There are 251,000 instances of "if he had of done" on  Google.


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## Alabarna

ahvalj said:


> An accepted standard form would be _такого как бы обращения_.


Not at all. It would change the intended meaning.


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## Alabarna

pimlicodude said:


> But it's odd in the original sentence, as it doesn't fit into any of types of sentences in your source.


It's odd, it's rare and non-normative, it doesn't fit. The author couldn't care less, and that's his right.


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## ahvalj

Alabarna said:


> Not at all. It would change the intended meaning.


It's actually ambiguous, I agree. If Solzhenitsyn meant _против того, чтобы евреи-интеллигенты обращались…,_ creating a conjunctive gerund (_обращение бы_), that's indeed a far-fetching linguistic experiment. I like it as well, but it is not decipherable by an average reader, especially without a context.


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## Alabarna

Here's the context:



> Еврейская народная масса и в 60–70‑е годы ещё оставалась вне ассимиляции, и угрожал
> отрыв от неё еврейской интеллигенции. <...> Да и в самой еврейской интеллигенции уже в конце 60‑х годов прозвучали тревожные голоса против такого бы обращения евреев-интеллигентов просто в русских патриотов. Первый об этом заговорил Перец Смоленскин в 1868: что ассимиляция с русским обликом носит для евреев «характер народной опасности»; что хотя не надо бояться просвещения, но и не следует порывать со своим историческим прошлым; приобщаясь к общей культуре, надо уметь сохранить свой национальный духовный облик, и «что евреи не религиозная секта, а нация». Если еврейская интеллигенция уйдёт от своего народа – он не вырвется из административного угнетения и духовного оцепенения.


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## ahvalj

Yes, you're right. My original variant implied this was a fictitious conversion, while Solzhenitsyn used that occasional conjunctive gerund, compacting a compound sentence into a simple one. I wonder if Russian moves into this direction eventually. Many world languages, Turkic for example, love such constructions, so it is not impossible in principle.


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## lena55313

nizzebro said:


> Btw, I cannot see why 'лучше бы' is considered a single whole.


Neither do I. Here the verb is omitted. Лучше бы (сделать Х, а не У).


ahvalj said:


> If Solzhenitsyn meant _против того, чтобы евреи-интеллигенты обращались…,_ creating a conjunctive gerund (_обращение бы_), that's indeed a far-fetching linguistic experiment.


It seems more likely to me that Solzhenitsyn just forgot to cross _бы _off the sentence and his editor was too scared to draw his attention to it.


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## nizzebro

ahvalj said:


> Yes, you're right. My original variant implied this was a fictitious conversion, while Solzhenitsyn used that occasional conjunctive gerund, compacting a compound sentence into a simple one. I wonder if Russian moves into this direction eventually. Many world languages, Turkic for example, love such constructions, so it is not impossible in principle.


Despite that I don't know much about world languages, I suppose that what you are taking about is an element which provides the meaning of "hypothetical" as an _inherent attribute of the entity_. That is, if we invent a prefix as 'hypo-' ,  we can attach it to different nouns resulting in words like 'hypo-situation'.  The problem is not even that such an approach is too formal.

Nouns and adjectives denote entities and attributes out of time - while verbs imply temporary nature for denoted states. And, unlike a constant attribute as that 'hypo-' or similar affix/particle/whatever, our 'бы' represents hypothetical nature of an entity  as its_ conditional state - _which, as any state, is by definition temporary.

The mentioned _показавшийся бы_ does not denote a permanent attribute as well.  It is about a situation which could happen - so it still uses a verbal form. And, it cannot exist without arguments and  adverbials - e.g. "показавшийся бы в данной ситуации странным" -  these help to implement conditionality - on the level of the predicate, not as applied to  the subject itself.

Of course, formal language can pack anything into one token,  but there is not much sense to represent temporary things in a form of a permanent attribute.  A form should correlate to its content.


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## pimlicodude

I think you could translate прозвучали тревожные голоса против такого бы обращения евреев-интеллигентов просто в русских патриотов as "voices of alarm were heard against such a WOULD-BE conversion of the Jewish intellectuals simply into Russian patriots".


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## Alabarna

pimlicodude said:


> I think you could translate прозвучали тревожные голоса против такого бы обращения евреев-интеллигентов просто в русских патриотов as "voices of alarm were heard against such a WOULD-BE conversion of the Jewish intellectuals simply into Russian patriots".


would-be
British English
2. 
intended to be
 would-be generosity

"Might-have-been", maybe?


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## pimlicodude

Alabarna said:


> would-be
> British English
> 2.
> intended to be
> would-be generosity
> 
> "Might-have-been", maybe?


Well, "might-have-been" is not a recognised adjective....
Or: "such a SEEMING conversion..."


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## Alabarna

pimlicodude said:


> Well, "might-have-been" is not a recognised adjective....


Well, I've just found this (_Psychohistorical Crisis_ by Donald Kingsbury, 2001.):



> A whole extinct class of large animals had yet to be replaced by evolution, perhaps the pulse-burrowers would grow into the vacant niche—if rats or rabbits or horses didn’t fill it first. Some *might-have-been paths* would never be taken because of mankind’s empire and invaders from the stars.


and this (a Russian-English translation by Andrew Bromfield):


> And we are shown our noble Leonid Prokhorov, the *might-have-been Light Magician*, in a different light! It turns out that he is also a *might-have-been Dark Magician*!


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## pimlicodude

Alabarna said:


> Well, I've just found this (_Psychohistorical Crisis_ by Donald Kingsbury, 2001.):
> 
> 
> and this (a Russian-English translation by Andrew Bromfield):


It's not a proper word, but of course there are 300m native speakers and they can please themselves to some extent. You could call it authorial licence. Dictionaries walk a tightrope between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some have the word "might-have-been" as a noun, not an adjective. But even as a noun, most copy-editors would remove this alleged word and rephrase the sentence.


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## pimlicodude

pimlicodude said:


> It's not a proper word, but of course there are 300m native speakers and they can please themselves to some extent. You could call it authorial licence. Dictionaries walk a tightrope between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and some have the word "might-have-been" as a noun, not an adjective. But even as a noun, most copy-editors would remove this alleged word and rephrase the sentence.


I've just noticed "might-have-been" in the OED, where it says "also attrib." (ie also adjectival), and one of the examples sentences is the "might-have-been world". But this is just playful use of language. It should be "the world that might have been". The OED tries to include all attested uses.


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## Alabarna

Если исповедовать современный коммуникативно-функциональный подход к переводу, сложный и ненормативный язык Солженицына надо передавать сложным и ненормативным английским.


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## pimlicodude

Alabarna said:


> Если исповедовать современный коммуникативно-функциональный подход к переводу, сложный и ненормативный язык Солженицына надо передавать сложным и ненормативным английским.


может быть, но я просто читаю книгу, не собираюсь её перевести на английский язык - хотя, чтобы правильно понять текст, иногда нужно как-то искать английских вариантов трудных фраз. мне повезло тем, что нашёл две аудиокниги этой книге (дат. п.???), читатели которых читают по разному - один говорит оседлость, другой осёдлость итд.


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## lena55313

pimlicodude said:


> не собираюсь её перевести на английский язык не собираюсь ее переводить


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## pimlicodude

Thank you. Is собираться always followed by the imperfective? I was thinking of the result (to translate the whole thing), but maybe собираться requires the imperfective. I always get this wrong. Thanks.


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## Alabarna

> может быть, но я просто читаю книгу, не собираюсь её *переводить* на английский язык - хотя, чтобы правильно понять текст, иногда нужно как-то искать английск*ие* вариант*ы* трудных фраз. мне повезло тем, что *я* нашёл две аудиокниги *по *этой книге, *чтецы* которых читают по*-*разному - один говорит "оседлость", другой "осёдлость", и т. д.


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## pimlicodude

Thank you, Alabama. There are a lot of good points there. Yes, I knew the word чтец, but didn't think of it.


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## lena55313

pimlicodude said:


> Is собираться always followed by the imperfective?


Здесь отрицание "не собираюсь", поэтому imperfective. А если утверждение "собираюсь", то можно оба варианта (imperfective/perfective). Я собираюсь/намереваюсь/хочу/планирую/задумал переводить книгу / я собираюсь (и т.п.) перевести книгу.
Похоже, пора правило расширять: _за глаголами желания или намерения с отрицанием всегда следует imperfective_.


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## nizzebro

pimlicodude said:


> Is собираться always followed by the imperfective? I was thinking of the result (to translate the whole thing), but maybe собираться requires the imperfective. I always get this wrong.


I'd add a bit to Lena's answer: I think the point is that 'не' is bound to 'собираюсь', not the infinitive. The one who is not-going-to, is rejecting that... but, what is the thing they are rejecting? Not a perfective result, but the imperfective process - otherwise we get a logical inconsistency: as we deny the result only, it turns out that we somehow accept the process which is to precede that result. But, once you reject yet the process, you do that for the result as well. So normally you use не собираюсь + [imperf. inf.].  The perfective  after 'не собираюсь' can occasionally happen in speech - e.g. in echo-replies, but it is just a deviation.


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