Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

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heartlandexpat
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Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

Postby heartlandexpat » Thu May 10, 2018 1:26 pm

Hi! So I have just a quick question regarding using cases when answering a question. Do you? I'd assume yes, but want to make sure. Specifically I'm learning Lithuanian but I'd assume other indo-european languages (or perhaps any case language?) would work similarly.

For example:
"Ką geri?" - "What are you drinking?"
-Alus. - nominative for beer
-Alų. - accusatuve for beer

And I mean specifically when you're giving a one word response, obviously if you said "Geriu alų" it would be accusative since that's the whole point of cases lol Thanks :)
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Re: Declining Answers?

Postby Serpent » Thu May 10, 2018 3:00 pm

I can't speak for all languages but in Russian you generally use the respective case. We sometimes use the nominative colloquially/carelessly, or if we want to avoid declining a foreign word.
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Re: Declining Answers?

Postby Kraut » Thu May 10, 2018 4:23 pm

Undefined quantities have genitive in some languages-
Je bois de la bière. (French) Qu'est-ce que tu as bu? De la biere ou du vin? - Du vin.
I'm not sure about Lithuanian, accusative might be wrong..
cf: Pirkau duonos (genitive). I bought bread.
----------
"Lithuanian out loud" has:

aš negeriu alaus (genitive), aš geriu dėgtinę (accusative)
If it's negative, it takes genitive.
---
The whole thing is complicated by the fact that Lithuanian has no articles.

I know why I have given up Lithuanian.
Last edited by Kraut on Thu May 10, 2018 6:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Declining Answers?

Postby Chung » Thu May 10, 2018 5:37 pm

heartlandexpat wrote:Hi! So I have just a quick question regarding using cases when answering a question. Do you? I'd assume yes, but want to make sure. Specifically I'm learning Lithuanian but I'd assume other indo-european languages (or perhaps any case language?) would work similarly.

For example:
"Ką geri?" - "What are you drinking?"
-Alus. - nominative for beer
-Alų. - accusatuve for beer

And I mean specifically when you're giving a one word response, obviously if you said "Geriu alų" it would be accusative since that's the whole point of cases lol Thanks :)


And here's a not so quick/short answer...

My experience has been that for a case-marking language a suitable clipped answer to a question (excepting "yes-no" ones) is to be put in the appropriate case so that it won't come off as ungrammatical, if not intentionally casual/sloppy/etc. I keep thinking that Korean is a little bit less strict about this alignment, but it's been a while since I've last worked it.

"What are you drinking? - (A) beer"
"Whom are you calling? - Chung"
"Where are you going? - (To) the wedding"

FINNISH
- Mitä juot? - Kaljaa. (kalja "beer" (nom. sing.) ~ kaljaa (direct object - partitive sing.))
- Kenelle soitat? - Chungille. (Chung "Chung" (nom.) ~ Chungille (object - allative))
- Mihin menet? - Häihin. (häät "wedding" (nom. plur.) ~ häihin (destination - illative plur.)

HUNGARIAN
- Mit iszol? - Sört. (sör "beer" (nom. sing.) ~ sört (direct object - accusative sing.))
- Kit hívsz fel? - Chungot. (Chung "Chung" (nom.) ~ Chungot (direct object - accusative))
- Hova mész? - Az esküvőre. (esküvő "wedding" (nom. sing.) ~ esküvőre (destination - sublative sing.)

POLISH
- Co pijesz? - Piwo. (piwo "beer" (nom. sing.) ~ piwo (direct object - accusative sing.))
- Do kogo dzwonisz? - Do Chunga. (Chung "Chung" (nom.) ~ Chunga ((prepositional) object - genitive))
- Dokąd/Gdzie idziesz? - Na wesele. (wesele "wedding (festivities)" (nom. plur.) ~ wesele ((prepositional) destination - accusative plur.)

SLOVAK
- Čo piješ? - Pivo. (pivo "beer" (nom. sing.) ~ pivo (direct object - accusative sing.))
- Komu voláš? - Chungovi. (Chung "Chung" (nom.) ~ Chungovi (object - dative))
- Kam ideš? - Na svadbu. (svadba "wedding" (nom. sing.) ~ svadbu ((prepositional) destination - accusative sing.)

TURKISH
- Ne içiyorsun? - Bira. (bira "beer" (nom. sing.) ~ bira (indefinite direct object - nom. sing.))
- Kimi arıyorsun? - Chung'u. (Chung "Chung" (nom.) ~ Chung'u (definite direct object - accusative))
- Nereye gidiyorsun? - Düğüne. (düğün "wedding" (nom. sing.) ~ düğüne (destination - dative sing.)

In some of the examples above, the answer looks and sounds the same as the basic or nominative form. Note also how the concept of a direct object need not be viewed as "accusative", which all stems from a broadly western European bias in teaching grammatical case by referring to Latin.

The above also doesn't cover what happens when your answer logically requires a verbal construction as in:

"What are you doing? - (I'm) reading."
Mitä teet? - Luen / Olen lukemassa. (Finnish)
Mit csinálsz? - Olvasok. (Hungarian)
Co robisz? - Czytam. (Polish)
Čo robíš? - Čítam. (Slovak)
Ne yapıyorsun? - Okuyorum. (Turkish)

It can also get tricky when the predicate uses something other than the nominative or basic form in some instances as in:

"What/Who are you? - (I'm) a student/Finn."
Kim jesteś? - (Jestem) studentem/Finnem. (Polish - instrumental sing.)
Kto si? - (Som) študent(om)/Fín. (Slovak - nominative or instrumental sing.)

In Polish, the complement or predicate of być "to be" is in instrumental when referring to someone's nationality or profession. In Slovak, this complement or predicate of byť is usually in nominative but when you want to emphasize that it's not permanent like being in a profession or defined role, then you can use instrumental. If some guy were to say Som Fín it'd be understood as that he's a Finnish man, and it's something intrinsic/permanent. If he were to say Som Fínom it'd be understood rather oddly that he's a Finn at the moment of speaking, or that he's merely playing the role of a Finnish man, and in the next moment he can become something else. Saying however Som študentom instead of Som študent would be less odd, with the first answer emphasizing that he views his being a student as something due to end (i.e. he'll graduate to become a corporate stiff). The latter answer comes off rather neutrally even though it's hard for anyone to believe that his being a student is permanent.

***

The bottom line is that getting the cases right matters, but sometimes the distinctiveness of cases is hidden by instances when declined forms have merged and nowadays look the same. German is a somewhat related example in that case endings are most prominent on adjectives (but have merged in many instances), but on nouns are a lot less productive unless you distinguish between singular and plural (and even then some German countable nouns have plurals that are identical to their singular forms). Apart from certain masculine nouns that take -n in non-nominative cases for singular, there's also the -(e)s ending of the genitive singular for masculine and neuter nouns.
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Re: Declining Answers?

Postby Stefan » Thu May 10, 2018 9:15 pm

Not at all what I expected when I saw the thread title. :)
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Re: Declining Answers?

Postby Serpent » Thu May 10, 2018 9:41 pm

Stefan wrote:Not at all what I expected when I saw the thread title. :)

Yeah I thought the same thing :D
Title edited, feel free to make further changes! (as long as it's clear you're not complaining that the quality of the answers here has declined :lol:)
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Re: Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

Postby heartlandexpat » Fri May 11, 2018 1:21 am

Okay I think that makes a lot of sense, thanks everyone! Essentially, I (very most likely) should use the case I would if it were within the full sentence. I will say as a proud Midwesterner I would consider myself a "casual" *cough* sloppy/careless *cough* speaker in my own language so I would be the one consistently just using nomative I guess, but maybe I'll hold off on getting stylistic until I can actually string thoughts together in LT :lol:

Kraut wrote:Undefined quantities have genitive in some languages-
Je bois de la bière. (French) Qu'est-ce que tu as bu? De la biere ou du vin? - Du vin.
I'm not sure about Lithuanian, accusative might be wrong..
cf: Pirkau duonos (genitive). I bought bread.
----------
"Lithuanian out loud" has:

aš negeriu alaus (genitive), aš geriu dėgtinę (accusative)
If it's negative, it takes genitive.


Didn't even think about quantities, so no clue there lol Let's pretend I used a more straightforward example and not a word I learned in a silo.

Yikes, I'll have to go back digging into my textbooks for better case explanations and to do some work with them. I'm screwing myself over bum rushing the learning process, but when you only find out you're moving somewhere about a month and a half before ya gotta be there that's how things are. Hopefully I'll get it all straightened out eventually!

@Chung - Daaaang, thanks for going all out! Very informative! Luckily, though some of LT's endings are similar but very much most of the 7(!) are different - at least if you're staying within singular vs plural and it's not a word that takes both gender endings, like professions, since some ofnthe different bases will share endings which are used for different cases between the two, if that makes sense. To be fair, I feel like learning LT might make german easier for those reasons since at least I'll know how cases are used (compared to when I've played with it in the past and just got really confused and glossed over it since it was just for funzies blah blah blah), but tbf maybe that won't be true at all!

Stefan wrote:Not at all what I expected when I saw the thread title. :)

To wrap up a very long post (sorry!) sorry about the title, my internet's been out the past few days and I'm crap at typing on a phone haha! Thanks for making my truncated title actually make sense, and seriously thanks for all the guidance!! Cases are just way to much for my little english speaking brain to handle, but I'm getting there!
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Re: Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

Postby Serpent » Fri May 11, 2018 4:26 pm

heartlandexpat wrote:To wrap up a very long post (sorry!) sorry about the title, my internet's been out the past few days and I'm crap at typing on a phone haha! Thanks for making my truncated title actually make sense
You're welcome :D
We have no problems with long posts. In fact we totally prefer one long post to several consecutive posts :)
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Re: Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

Postby Cainntear » Sat May 12, 2018 11:08 am

What I find interesting is how things die.

Ummm...

Not like that. ;-)

Spanish, French, Italian and English have lost their case marking in nouns and retained vestigial cases in pronouns.

However, while Spanish and Italian require short replies to agree with the case of the question (io vs me; yo vs mi) or preceding sentence (anch'io vs anche a me; yo también vs a mí también), French and English don't ("who wants ice cream?" "Me." (not *I); "I want ice-cream" "me too").

Some of these patterns of grammar loss are very stable and predictable -- I wonder if this is one of the universal stages of loss of case marking.
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Re: Cases in single-word answers (multilingual)

Postby Kraut » Sat May 12, 2018 12:18 pm

Lithuanians cannot talk without their cases, since they have no articles and only a loose word order. This is why they immediately add case endings to foreign names: "Haris Poteris".
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