# wstrząsnąć + instrumental VS. accusative



## Lorenc

A particularly treacherous feature of Polish grammar is that some verbs a foreign student might expect to be transitive (i.e., to require the accusative case) are actually intransitive and therefore require a different case. 
One such example seems to be the verb _wstrząsnąć/wstrząsać_, to shake. It seems to me that the object or person being shaken must be in the instrumental case: 
_wstrząsać głową. 
wiadomość wstrząsnęła opinią publiczną.
ciałem jego wstrząsały dreszcze._

Looking at the examples from the NKJP it seems to me that the instrumental is the only case possible, and the accusative (eg _ciało jego wstrząsały dreszcze) _is not grammatical; nevertheless, my dictionary reports this sentence: _Wstrząsnąć lekarstwo przed użyciem._ 
Is this sentence correct? Is so, when is accusative possible after _wstrząsnąć/wstrząsać _?


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## lukis421

I would say it's possible, I can imagine myself saying 'wstrząśnij mleko' or 'wstrząśnij sok, kefir' (in fact, 'wstrząśnij kefirem/sokiem' sounds bizarre to me) or 'mieszaninę należy porządnie wstrząsnąć'. It seems that this form might only be applicable to liquids that you need to shake before use, for example.  I can't say for sure that it's 100% correct, though.


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## jasio

Lorenc said:


> A particularly treacherous feature of Polish grammar is that some verbs a foreign student might expect to be transitive (i.e., to require the accusative case) are actually intransitive and therefore require a different case.


As far as I am able to tell, they are still transitive. They only require different case of the noun. 
Wikipedia quites Klemensiewicz with this respect (Dopełnienie (językoznawstwo) – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia): 





> W języku polskim występuje dopełnienie bliższe (zwykle w bierniku, lub w zdaniach zanegowanych w dopełniaczu, rzadziej w narzędniku), oraz dopełnienie dalsze (w celowniku, narzędniku lub miejscowniku).





Lorenc said:


> One such example seems to be the verb _wstrząsnąć/wstrząsać_, to shake. It seems to me that the object or person being shaken must be in the instrumental case:


It seems to me that derivatives of "trząść" (perhaps even all of them) have this feature in general. 



Lorenc said:


> Is so, when is accusative possible after _wstrząsnąć/wstrząsać_?


Frankly speaking, I have no idea. When you mention parts of the body, they are in instrumental case. If you shake objects - typically as well. Perhaps there is a subtle semantic difference between 'shake' = 'vibrate / wave something / shock someone' (Instrumental case) and 'shake = mix something' (accusative case). But it's only a guess. 

If you make a coctail (like gin and tonic) you would also say "wstrząśnij koktail". In fact, "wstrząśnij zawartością butelki" would sound to me as if you wanted to tell the contents of the bottle something shocking.


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## Lorenc

jasio said:


> As far as I am able to tell, they are still transitive. They only require different case of the noun.
> Wikipedia quites Klemensiewicz with this respect (Dopełnienie (językoznawstwo) – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia):
> [...]
> As far as I am able to tell, they are still transitive. They only require different case of the noun.



It seems that the definition for 'transitive/intransitive' (przechodni/nieprzechodni) is slightly different in different grammatical traditions.
As far as I'm concerned, in Italian or English I would consider a verb transitive if it takes a 'direct object' (=a person or thing affected by the action of the verb) without any preposition; so 'to eat (an apple)', 'to drive (a car)', 'to help (someone)' are transitive verbs to me.
Transitive verbs in Italian generally translate into Latin in verbs which require the accusative, and because of the long Latin tradition in Italy I would think that to most classically-educated Italians 'transitive' in also equivalent to 'it requires the accusative'.
Consequently, in the example given in the Wikipedia page "Marcin kieruje ciężarówką" I wouldn't consider 'kierować' transitive when used in the meaning of 'to drive', at variance with Polish customs, as it seems. The litmus test for transitivity in Polish is, it seems, the potentiality of transforming the sentence into the passive voice, so that e.g. _jeść_ is transitive because we can change a sentence such as _Adam je kanapkę_ to _Kanapka jest jedzona przez Adama_.
Wikipedia reports that _Marcin kieruje ciężarówką_ can be changed into _ciężarówka jest kierowana przez Marcina_ , so _kierować _is considered transitive.
I had never noticed that one can build passive sentences from verbs which don't take the accusative:
_mądrzy ludzi unikają sporów => spory są unikane przez mądrych ludzi
kobiety rządzą światem => świat jest rządzony przez kobiety_
But what about:
_Marcin pomaga Basi => Basia jest pomagana przez Marcina_ 

Interesting. Be that as it may, from the point of a foreign learner (at least for those with a Indo-European language as native language) it is useful IMO to have a label for verbs which don't take a direct object in the accusative, e.g. verbs such as rządzić, unikać, pomagać, pragnąć, używać, potrzebować... What shall we call them, if not intransitive? Non-accusative-governing verbs? Non-accusatory verbs? 



jasio said:


> It seems to me that derivatives of "trząść" (perhaps even all of them) have this feature in general.
> Frankly speaking, I have no idea. When you mention parts of the body, they are in instrumental case. If you shake objects - typically as well. Perhaps there is a subtle semantic difference between 'shake' = 'vibrate / wave something / shock someone' (Instrumental case) and 'shake = mix something' (accusative case). But it's only a guess.



I've spent some time perusing by trusty Oxford-PWN dictionary looking at the examples given for the many verbs of the 'trząść' family.
I will summarise my observations here, and I'll also examine some related consideration which came up during my investigation. As always, any comment or correction is very much welcome 

1. Overall from 'trząść' I identified 10 prefixes which can produce derived verbs: za-, po-, ws-, o-, s-, prze-, u-, wy-, na-, roz-. The possible endings are -sać (giving imperfective verbs, e.g. _wstrząsać_) or -ść and -snąć for perfective forms (e.g., _wstrząść, wstrząsnąć_).
Most of the derived verbs have meanings related with physically 'shaking' something, with (what I consider) two exceptions:
_ natrząsąć się (z kogoś)_ = to make fun (of someone)
_ roztrząsać (sprawę)_= to discuss at length (a matter)

2. The verbs which have a rather generic meaning of 'shaking something', e.g. a body part or an object, are only the following: _trząść_, _zatrząść_ (which functions AFAIU as a perfective quasi-partner to _trząść_), _potrząsać_/_potrząsnąć_ and _wstrząsać_/_wstrząść,wstrząsnąć_.
All of these generally take the shaken object in the *instrumental*, but in some specific cases they may take the *accusative*. It seems difficult to give general rules as to when the accusative is possible.
For example:

trząść/potrząsać/wstrząsać *głową *(_głowę_ not possible)
wichura trzęsła/potrząsała/wstrząsała *drzewami/gałęziami* (_drzewa/gałęzie_ not possible)
trząść *kogoś *za ramiona to shake sb by the shoulders (kimś also possible?)
policjant potrząsnął *go*/*nim *za ramię the policeman shook him by the arm (both possible?)
gorączka/zimno *go*/*nim *trzęsie he’s shaking/trembling with fever/cold (both possible?)

Three of the 'trąść' verbs have the specific meaning 'to shake a tree in order to make fruits/nuts fall to the ground'; in this meaning accusative is used for trząść and utrząsać/utrząść/utrząsnąć:
trząść *jabłka/gruszki* to shake the apples/pears off the tree
utrząść *gruszki *w koszyku
However, genitive is apparently used for natrząść (ahem, why?):
natrząść *jabłek/orzechów* z drzewa

From a pragmatic point of view it seems that a foreign learner has to learn whether to use accusative or instrumental on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, I would like to discuss the difference in meaning (if any) between the perfective forms ending in -nąć and the ones in -ąść.
Most of the prefixed verbs derived from trząść usually come in triplets, with one imperfective and two perfective forms, as in the following example:

* otrząsać *_imfp._ [otrząsam; otrząsał] to shake off (e.g., śnieg z butów)
* otrząść *_pf._ [otrzęsę, otrzęsiesz; otrząsł]
*otrząsnąć *_pf._ [otrząsnę, otrząśniesz; otrząsnął]

In connection to this issue I'd like to mention an interesting PhD thesis by A. Młynarczyk, in which a new classification of Polish verbs is suggested according to which Polish verbs can be grouped into 5 classes.
According to her scheme, 'trząść' would be categorized, AFAIU, as a 'class-4' verb, which she calls the class of unit-isable processes, i.e. processes "which describe eventualities which can be broken up into a sequence of ‘units’". Other verbs of this kind are pukać, migać, tupać.

According to her classification one would expect that:

1) trząść should have a perfective partner formed by addition of an 'empty-meaning' prefix. I would identify this partner with 'zatrząść'.

2) trząść should admit a form with the 'delimitative' po- prefix, which has the meaning ' the action lasted for some amount of time, has finished but no
natural terminus (no achievement) was reached'.
One would therefore predict 'potrząść', which is not reported by my PWN-Oxford dictionary but is in the PWN SJP:
spędzić pewien czas trzęsąc czymś (kimś)
So this second prediction seems to be verified too.

3) trząść should form perfective partners with the -nąć ending, which is called 'semel-factive' by Młodarczyk (from Latin semel=once and factive=~doing);
Such perfective -nąć verbs should express having carryed out a single unit of action.
On the other hand, the -ąść endings should signify a completed sequence of units.

So, if point 3. above is correct, then *otrząść *should means 'to have shaken off' while *otrząsnąć *would indicate a single shaking movement, 'to have shaken off (once)'. According to this logic I would therefore expect:
*otrząsł *buty ze śniegu i wszedł do pokoju
rather than
*otrząsnął *buty ze śniegu i wszedł do pokoju

In practice, however, it seems that otrząsnąć (and its derived forms) is used much more often than otrząść, and without the meaning of 'having shaken once only'. So it seems to me that it's usage which decides which of the two perfective possibilities is used.
Analogous considerations hold for wstrząść/wstrząsnąć, strząść/strząsnąć, utrząść/utrząsnąć, wytrząść/wytrząsnąć, roztrząść/roztrząsnąć.

What do you think?


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## Lorenc

For what it's worth, I checked on the NKJP the number of occurrencies for various forms of verbs of the 'trząść' family.
I'll quote below the number cumulative occurrences for forms in the infinitive, first and third person singular non-past and third person masculine past.

*trząść 1371
potrząsać 506*; *potrząsnąć 921
wstrząsać 224*; *wstrząść 2*; *wstrząsnąć 370*
*zatrząść 321
otrząsać 142*; *otrząść 9*; *otrząsnąć 475
strząsać 75*; *strząść 2*; *strząsnąć 110
wytrząsać 57*; *wytrząść 24*; *wytrząsnąć 82*
*przetrząsać 90*; *przetrząsnąć 49
roztrząsać 114*;* roztrząść 2*; *roztrząsnąć 2
natrząsać 51*; *natrząść 2
utrząsać 0*; *utrząść 4*; *utrząsnąć 0*

My conclusion is that the perfective forms in *-ąsnąć* are much, much more common than the ones in *-ąść*. The only form in *-ąść* with non-negligible usage is wytrząść. 
I therefore assume that the forms in -ąsnąć are used as generic perfective forms without the 'one unit of action' meaning.
_utrząsać_ (and related verbs) seems to be very rarely used. _natrząsać_ is mostly used in its reflexive form (presumably with the meaning 'to poke fun at someone').


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## jasio

Lorenc said:


> It seems that the definition for 'transitive/intransitive' (przechodni/nieprzechodni) is slightly different in different grammatical traditions.


Is it really so surprising - especially if you consider that an English parallel construction to present continuous tense is not even considered a tense in Italian? ;-) Spanish epiteto is not really the same as Polish epitet either.



Lorenc said:


> But what about:
> _Marcin pomaga Basi => Basia jest pomagana przez Marcina_


Not really.



Lorenc said:


> Interesting. Be that as it may, from the point of a foreign learner (at least for those with a Indo-European language as native language) it is useful IMO to have a label for verbs which don't take a direct object in the accusative, e.g. verbs such as rządzić, unikać, pomagać, pragnąć, używać, potrzebować... What shall we call them, if not intransitive? Non-accusative-governing verbs? Non-accusatory verbs?


Is there really a need for such a name?



Lorenc said:


> Most of the derived verbs have meanings related with physically 'shaking' something, with (what I consider) two exceptions:
> _ natrząsąć się (z kogoś)_ = to make fun (of someone)
> _ roztrząsać (sprawę)_= to discuss at length (a matter)


If you laugh at someone, you ususally do shake, don't you? ;-) If you discuss things, you often shake your head one way or the other. So, although these two do not refer to shaking in a literal sense, they're quite close.



Lorenc said:


> Finally, I would like to discuss the difference in meaning (if any) between the perfective forms ending in -nąć and the ones in -ąść.
> Most of the prefixed verbs derived from trząść usually come in triplets, with one imperfective and two perfective forms, as in the following example:
> 
> * otrząsać *_imfp._ [otrząsam; otrząsał] to shake off (e.g., śnieg z butów)
> * otrząść *_pf._ [otrzęsę, otrzęsiesz; otrząsł]
> *otrząsnąć *_pf._ [otrząsnę, otrząśniesz; otrząsnął]


The middle one does not seem to be correct though. At least for my ear.



Lorenc said:


> 2) trząść should admit a form with the 'delimitative' po- prefix, which has the meaning ' the action lasted for some amount of time, has finished but no
> natural terminus (no achievement) was reached'.
> One would therefore predict 'potrząść', which is not reported by my PWN-Oxford dictionary but is in the PWN SJP:
> spędzić pewien czas trzęsąc czymś (kimś)
> So this second prediction seems to be verified too.


"Potrząsnąć" would work though.



Lorenc said:


> 3) trząść should form perfective partners with the -nąć ending, which is called 'semel-factive' by Młodarczyk (from Latin semel=once and factive=~doing);
> Such perfective -nąć verbs should express having carryed out a single unit of action.
> On the other hand, the -ąść endings should signify a completed sequence of units.


I do not think, this theory really holds the ground - at least in this case.


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## Lorenc

jasio said:


> Lorenc said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It seems that the definition for 'transitive/intransitive' (przechodni/nieprzechodni) is slightly different in different grammatical traditions.
> 
> 
> 
> Is it really so surprising - especially if you consider that an English parallel construction to present continuous tense is not even considered a tense in Italian? ;-) Spanish epiteto is not really the same as Polish epitet either.
Click to expand...


True, it's not earth-shattering news that specialised terms differ sometimes in subtle ways from one language to another  BTW an Italian 'epiteto' is (ASAIU) different from the Polish/Spanish definitions quoted in an old thread on this forum...



jasio said:


> Is there really a need for such a name? [for non verbs not requiring the accusative]


Well, such verbs are, generally speaking the most insidious, especially if in one's native language one would use the accusative (=a direct object without prepositions). So from the point of view of a foreign learner it'd be useful to have lists of such verbs, as we have lists for irregular plurals or verbs. 



jasio said:


> Lorenc said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the derived verbs have meanings related with physically 'shaking' something, with (what I consider) two exceptions:
> _natrząsąć się (z kogoś)_ = to make fun (of someone)
> _roztrząsać (sprawę)_= to discuss at length (a matter)
> 
> 
> 
> If you laugh at someone, you usually do shake, don't you? ;-) If you discuss things, you often shake your head one way or the other.
> So, although these two do not refer to shaking in a literal sense, they're quite close.
Click to expand...


Yes, you're right, but it takes some imagination to fit the 'shaking' meaning to these uses 



jasio said:


> The middle one *[otrząść] *does not seem to be correct though. At least for my ear.


Your observation confirms my findings on the National Corpus of Polish that most of the -ąść forms are very rarely used.



jasio said:


> I do not think, this theory really holds the ground - at least in this case.



Yes, I see. Perhaps the theory was correct a few hundreds of years ago, but now the 'semelfactive' meaning is being lost, at least for some verbs.


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## Gadano

My Lord, even for me, a native speaker, this one is a head-scratcher !


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