Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 8/23/84; site ucbcad.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!vallath From: vallath@ucbcad.UUCP (Vallath Nandakumar) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Slavic languages and sealing wax Message-ID: <65@ucbcad.UUCP> Date: Sun, 7-Jul-85 00:03:45 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbcad.65 Posted: Sun Jul 7 00:03:45 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 09:26:52 EDT References: <349@spar.UUCP> <10500061@uiucdcsb> Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group, Berkeley, CA Lines: 39 I found, when learning Russian, that the most difficult aspect :-) of using Russian verbs correctly was when they were in the infinitive and imperative forms. Use of a finite Russian verb in the indicative mood is fairly straightforward, and is almost a direct correspondence from English or Malayalam tenses. (Malayalam, A Dravidian language from South India, is my mother tongue. I feel that the tense system of English, and more so of Malayalam, conveys verbal meaning much more efficiently than the aspect system of Russian, but this could very well be because my knowledge of Russian is quite limited.) Did other people find it also true that the imperative and infinitive were tough going for non-Slavic speakers? Somebody mentioned earlier that the Slavic languages developed an aspect system at some time he/she was able to state. What system of tenses was there before that? Judy (whose article was very interesting), mentioned that Bulgarian has a separate tense to describe what was directly observed and what was not. Sanskrit has such a mood, aspect or whatever you want to call it, and it had a full conjugation system for all three persons and numbers (singular, dual and plural). Those erudite scholars of Sanskrit pointed out that the verb can never be used in the first person, but one scholar, more erudite than the rest, made up a list of statements in which the tense could be used. For example: "I was so drunk that I went and punched the king on his nose". You can bet that the speaker did not know waht he was doing if he was in ancient India! Vallath Nandakumar Dept. of EECS, UC Berkeley. esvax.vallath@berkeley.arpa, ucbvax!ucbesvax!vallath