RE: [ru] Accusative v Genitive

Oh, I never thought of the direct objects of negative verbs, thank you for pointing that out, Rachel.

 

Купи хлеб – Я не купил хлеба, 

Купи колбасу - я не купил колбасы

 

But I guess we use Genitive often when it comes to negatives, for instance after ‘нет’

 

У меня нет ни бумаги, ни карандаша

 

Ирина

 

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> 
Sent: 14 April 2020 01:52
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [ru] Accusative v Genitive

 






Hmm. I always understood it like this: that in Russian masculine animate nouns, the accusative has the form of the genitive. That is, it’s still an accusative by function, but this particular class of nouns takes a different form. Whereas with objects of negative verbs, the direct object goes into the genitive. Whether I was taught that, or internalized it that way on my own, I can’t tell you. I do know that I came to learning Russian with already a strong sense of noun cases, not so much because of he/him and such things in English, but from having studied Latin early on (age 10). Not that Latin substitutes the genitive form for the accusative, but it does have verbs that may demand that their objects be in the genitive in some contexts.

http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/genitive-verbs

Wish I had studied Greek and Sanskrit!

 

R.

 

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> 
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 10:53 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ru] Accusative v Genitive

Мне, как учителю русского для иностранцев (very occasional teacher), кажется что она правильно исправила, хотя формально это может считаться и винительным падежом, но одушевленные склоняются по правилам родительного падежа в таких случаях вне зависимости от числа.

Северные народы едят оленей (оленя)

Северные народы едят огурцы (огурец)

Ирина Х.