 |
Vreleksá
The Alurhsa Word for Constructed: Creativity in both scripts and languages
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
eldin raigmore
Admin
Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
|
 Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:11 pm Post subject: OT: need help from an L1-Greek-speaker |
 |
|
USAmerican Thanksgiving holiday is coming up (Canadian has already passed).
How do you say "Give Thanks" in Greek?
My local library says
Δώστε τις ευχαριστίες
Babelfish says (see http://tinyurl.com/yakww3z)
I give thanks Ευχαριστώ
Give thanks Δώστε ευχαριστίες
Give Δίνω
Thanks Ευχαριστώ
Swapping languages, Babelfish says (see http://tinyurl.com/ydj33b2)
Δώστε τις ευχαριστίες Give thanks
Δίνω Ευχαριστώ I give thanks
Δώστε ευχαριστίες Give thanks
Δίνω Give
Ευχαριστώ Thanks
Δώστε Give
ευχαριστίες thanks
The trouble for me is that ευχαριστίες sounds more like "grace" than like "thanks". Of course I speak no Greek so odds are I'm
wrong. But Babelfish is also often wrong, and the library says they have
difficulty finding a native Greek-speaker.
See
http://tinyurl.com/yakww3z
and
http://tinyurl.com/ydj33b2.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Hemicomputer
Joined: 04 Feb 2008
Posts: 610
Location: Calgary, Alberta
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
I am by no means a native Greek-speaker, but I know that Ευχαριστώ is the equivalent of "thank you," so the translations "thanks" and "I give thanks" are accurate. Does that help?
Google translate gives:
Ευχαριστώ --> Thanks
ευχαριστίες --> thanks
Swapping languages, it gives two Greek translations for thanks:
Interjection ευχαριστώ!
Noun ευχαριστίες
Does that help?
Are you trying to translate "give thanks" as an infinitive? A command? A general phrase?
_________________
Bakram uso, mi abila, / del us bakrat, dahud bakrita! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eldin raigmore
Admin
Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 5:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I also asked this question on the CONLANG Listserv at Brown.Edu, and got complete answers. In essence, my library is right.
| Hemicomputer wrote: | | Are you trying to translate "give thanks" as an infinitive? A command? A general phrase? |
I believe it is an imperative; but perhaps it is 1st-person-plural-inclusive.
Otherwise I guess it could be just about anything.
Probably:
Imperfective aspect -- imperative or indicative mood -- present tense --
1st or 2nd person -- singular or plural (probably inclusive) --
and it may be a gerund or infinitive or masdar or supine or whatevertheheck kind of verbal you'd like.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
killerken
Joined: 30 Sep 2008
Posts: 134
Location: Florida
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2009 4:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Masdar? What's that? I Googled it and just got a bunch of Arab stuff.
_________________
Speak: English, Spanish
Invent: Fidhaas
Learn: Polish
Awesome: Yes |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eldin raigmore
Admin
Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| killerken wrote: | | Masdar? What's that? I Googled it and just got a bunch of Arab stuff. |
Maybe Persian and Georgian rather than Arab. It comes from a word meaning "source" and is one of the names for one kind of verbal noun in some languages; it's the root form of the verb in those languages.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Aeetlrcreejl
Joined: 08 Jun 2007
Posts: 839
Location: Over yonder
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 10:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| eldin raigmore wrote: | | killerken wrote: | | Masdar? What's that? I Googled it and just got a bunch of Arab stuff. |
Maybe Persian and Georgian rather than Arab. It comes from a word meaning "source" and is one of the names for one kind of verbal noun in some languages; it's the root form of the verb in those languages. |
Is that term really used in Georgian? I didn't know that.
_________________
Iwocwá ĵọṭãsák.
/iwotSwa_H d`Z`Ot`~asa_Hk/
[iocwa_H d`Z`Ot`_h~a_Hk] |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eldin raigmore
Admin
Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Aeetlrcreejl wrote: | | Is that term really used in Georgian? I didn't know that. |
Yes.
Also, Chechen, at least.
It's also used in Persian,
various Caucasian languages,
Udi among them,
maybe not Urdu?,
Archi, and possibly also Chichewa, Chuckchee, Malagasay, Qafar, Slave, Wari', Warumungu -- or possibly only Archi,
Georgian,
Svan,
and possibly even Tulugaq.
Ok, here goes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_noun has links about gerunds, infinitives, and supines.
It also has a link to participles. An English gerund and an English present participle look and sound alike; the difference is in whether it's used like a noun or like an adjective.
| Wikipedia wrote: | | Some claim that true nouns sharing the stem of their respective verbs are also verbal nouns (such as survival from survive). However, in English grammar it is a little accepted view, on the grounds that it would make nearly all nouns verbal nouns; but in some other languages, such as Arabic, that view is the only possible one, as there is no gerund or infinitive form of a verb (the Arabic masdar is a verbal noun: naql, for example, can be translated as "transporting" or "to transport", but its literal meaning is "transportation".) |
| Wikipedia wrote: | maṣdar مصدر is the Arabic for "source". It may refer to:
the Arabic verbal noun
in linguistic typology, verbal nouns in general |
I really think you got so much Arabic because:
(1) The original word "masdar" is (was?) Arabic;
(2) Masdar, planned city in Abu Dhabi
(3) Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a university in Abu Dhabi
(4) Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar)
So, "masdar" is used in describing various languages; in particular, Arabic. It may have different meanings depending on which language is being described.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerund says "gerund" has different meanings depending on which language is being described. It isn't used in all languages. In some languages it's a verbal adverb instead of a verbal noun (just as in some a participle is a verbal noun instead of a verbal adjective). But usually, the most important kind of verbal noun is called "infinitive" and the second-most-important kind is called "gerund".
"Gerunds" are frequently used as "action nominalizations".
| Wikipedia wrote: | ... infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. .... As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition of infinitive that applies to all languages. Many Native American languages and some languages in Africa and Aboriginal Australia simply do not have infinitives or verbal nouns. In their place they use finite verb forms used in ordinary clauses or special constructions.
In languages that have infinitives, they generally have most of the following properties:
- In most uses, infinitives are non-finite verbs.
- They function as other lexical categories — usually nouns — within the clauses that contain them, for example by serving as the subject of another verb.
- They do not represent any of the verb's arguments (as employer and employee do).
- They are not inflected to agree with any subject
- They cannot serve as the only verb of a declarative sentence.
- They do not have tense, aspect, moods, and/or voice, or they are limited in the range of tenses, aspects, moods, and/or voices that they can use. (In languages where infinitives do not have moods at all, they are usually treated as being their own non-finite mood.)
- They are used with auxiliary verbs.
However, it bears repeating that none of the above is a defining quality of the infinitive; infinitives do not have all these properties in every language, as it is shown below, and other verb forms may have one or more of them. For example, English gerunds and participles have most of these properties as well. |
(Participles, unlike infinitives, usually do "represent one of the verb's arguments". That's why lots of languages have an "active participle" such as "the wounding one" and a "passive participle" such as "the wounded one". Coincidentally in English, perfective participles and passive participles and past participles all sound alike, just as imperfective participles and active participles and present participles all sound alike.
In English, like many languages, participles are verbal adjectives, not verbal nouns; so English's actor-nominalizations like "employer" and its patient-nominalizations like "employee" are not the same as its active participle "employing" and its passive participle "employed". But in languages with a less clear-cut boundary between nouns and adjectives, for instance one like French which has substantives (nouns used as adjectives and adjectives used as nouns), it may be that the active participle "is" also the agent nominalization, and/or the passive participle "is" also the patient nominalization. That may go for other languages as well)
A "supine", if that term is used in describing a particular language, is even more language-idiosyncratic than an infinitive or a gerund. It's usually more of a verbal adverb than a verbal noun (at least that's my impression).
Typically it's used in a position where English would use some verbal noun, such as an infinitive or a gerund.
In some languages (Latin? Icelandic, perhaps? or Finnish?) it's usually -- or at least frequently -- used as a "verbal adverb".
For instance, in Latin, "It's good to drink", the supine form of their verb "drink" is used, as an adverb modifying the adjective "good"; it tells why or in what way or for what purpose something is "good".
Glottopedia says "The verbal supine is indifferent to voice, tense and mood, comparing with the attitude of a person lying nonchalantly."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Take a look at
http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Main_Page.
http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Converb
says, in effect:
* the verb that's the nucleus of a complement clause (a nominal subordinate clause) is called a masdar;
* the verb that's the nucleus of a relative clause (an adjectival subordinate clause) is called a participle;
* the verb that's the nucleus of an adjunct clause (an adverbial subordinate clause) is called a converb.
http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Tschetschenisch says the term "masdar" is used in describing Chechen.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
killerken
Joined: 30 Sep 2008
Posts: 134
Location: Florida
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 10:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Very interesting. Those were the results I was getting in my search. While I am taking Latin is school, the supine isn't covered until third semester, so I can't tell you anything about it. It's very interesting that different languages have so many different ways to fulfill a need! Many thanks!
_________________
Speak: English, Spanish
Invent: Fidhaas
Learn: Polish
Awesome: Yes |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eldin raigmore
Admin
Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Another kind of verbal noun I didn't talk about is the "verbnoun".
(Naturally when speaking to L2-English-speakers, or L1-English-speakers who haven't yet been formally taught the grammar of English as it's usually presented in school in English-speaking countries, they have a tendency to confuse "verbnoun" and "verbal noun" as synonyms. They're related terms, but not synonyms.)
Celtic languages, and FAIK others, have a lot of two-word verbs in which the major semantic content is in the "verbnoun", which syntactically acts like a verbal noun, but also like a main verb; the other part is an auxiliary verb, which communicates many of the usual accidents of verbs (e.g. aspect, tense, modality/mode/mood, polarity, voice), and usually could not stand alone as the nucleus of a clause. The main verb may be able to inflect for some accidents depending on the values of other accidents (e.g., present tense can't but past or future can; or perfective can't but imperfective can; or something like that); but in some cases, even so, it is nevertheless more common to use an auxiliary.
(A Celtic language is the only language I've ever heard of that has a "voice auxiliary".)
Like many verb-initial languages most Celtic languages have a robust agreement system, marking the verb to agree with more than one of its participants, and telling a lot about the subject just from the verb.
Celtic languages are usually also head-marking in adpositional phrases; that is, the prepositions agree with their object noun-phrases.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
