AHOJ GABRIEL,

KED ni ZNAMENA ZAPOR, AKO POTOM ROBIS ZAPOR PRI VSETKYCH SLOVESACH ?

napr.

nepracovat, nevidiet, nepocut, neliecit, neobsahovat, nedovolit, neprichadzat, nestotoznit sa, neinvestovat, neabsolvovat, nedychat, nemoct, nesmiet, nechciet
a pod.

I.

_______________________________________________________________________

GABRIEL, YOU HAVEN'T TRANSLATED THESE WORDS INTO SLOVIANSKI YET. WHY ?

I.

AHOJ GABRIEL,

YES, YOU ARE RIGHT. NEGATION IS "NE" [BEFORE ANY WORD BUT SEPARATELLY]

SO, "NEKO" MEANS "NOBODY".

ANYTHING ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW ?

I.

GABRIEL,


HOW DO YOU MAKE NEGATION IN SLOVIANSKI ? [introduce some examples]

HOW DO YOU MAKE PASSIVE VOICE ? [write some examples]

HOW DO YOU MAKE PERFECT TENSE ? [write some examples]


Thank you,

I.

somebody:
Russian - n'ekto
Ukrainian - htos'
Polish - kto's
Czech - n'ekdo
Slovak - niekto
Serbian - neko
Bulgarian - njakoj
Macedonian - nekoj

nobody:
Russian - nikto
Ukrainain - nihto
Polish - nikt
Czech - nikdo
Slovak - nikto
Serbian - niko
Bulgarian - niko
Macedonian - nikoj

So you can be quite sure that if some Slav will understand neko at all, (s)he will understand it as "somebody", not as "nobody".

Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. are negated by means of ne-.

Correlatives are negated by means of ni-.

Indefiniteness at pronouns is expressed by means of ne-.

The passive participle is formed

- by means of -ani from verbs ending in -at (pisani - written),
- by means of -eni from verbs ending in -et (videni - seen),
- by means of -eni from verbs ending in -it (govoreni - spoken),
- by means of -iti from short verbs ending in -it (žiti - lived),
- by means of -uti from verbs ending in -ut (kradnuti - stolen).

The passive participles are declined in the same way as adjectives (pisani jezik, pisana kniga, pisano pismo, pisane jeziki, pisane knigi, pisane pisma).

Context makes the perfective aspect in Slovianski-P.

Anything else would you like to know?

Passive participle should be formed by -(e)n in every case
dashes added to separate suffixes

pisa-t: pisan
vide-t: viden
govor-it: govoren
živl'a-t: živl'an
you can't have a passive for žit because "to live" can't ever be passive (o)živl'at, means to "make alive" which CAN be passive
krad-nu-t: kraden

then you can add whatever adjectival ending you want:

pis-an-i, pis-an-a, pis-an-o, etc.
kradnuto doesn't sound as good as kradeno to me

you could use the oživlet form instead and form the passive as oživlen which is more common in the passive (Macedonian, Serbian, Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, and reflexes of e Russian and Polish) yet I don't know why a lot of languages have an oživ'at form (Bulgarian; ožil'at in Ukrainian, Russian).

NO DOBRE GABRIEL A AKO BY SI PRELOZIL " NIEKDE" - somewhere.

How would you translate "somewhere " ?

According to your grammar rules you cannot use neither ni- nor ne-

because it would be negation. But in czech it is nekde and in slovak niekde,
whereby it looks like negation. So, it is not very good construction you
apply to this negation.


I.

OK, here is the rule: imprefective verbs have to become perfective first before being passive

I finally figured it out

so therefore:
na-pisa-n (perfective due to prefix)
ozxivlen (perfective due to -et ending becomes ozxivlen) not sure if we have to keep the l or just allow the verb to become ozxivl'at > ozxivet > ozxiven
u-govor-en (perfective due to prefix)
do-govor-en (perfective due to prefix)
in Russian the word govoren is practically impossible, Russians use skazan in that specific case, and Ukrainian also uses a different word for the meaning

as far as "somewhere" note that Russian has "gde-to" for somewhere; "gde-nibud'", "gde-libo" for anywhere.

similarly "kuda-to" means to somewhere; "kuda-nibud'", "kuda-libo" means to anywhere.

http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/indef.html

It is remarkably regular. How understandable is it to other languages?
BTW, in Russian sometimes the "ne" forms are negative:
http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/negative.html

which makes me doubt using the "ne" clitic for "some"
Zdes' ne komu pomocx. There's NO one to help here.

iopq wrote:

"OK, here is the rule: imprefective verbs have to become perfective first before being passive"

Since this is not my kettle of fish (or whatever) the following is probably a stupid question, but isn't the IMP Passive normally expressed by means of the IMP Reflexive form?

Rolf

I don't recall any imperfective passive verbs, but I'd like to hear some examples

To iopq:
From my Russian grammar (pardon the transcription, my keyboard does not handle Cyrillics well):

Dom stroitsja = The house is being built
Zdesj prodajutsja gazety = Newspapers (being) sold here.

I also venture a constuction of my own:
Kniga bydet cxitatjsja = The book will be read in
as opposed to
Kniga budet procxitan = The book will be read through.

This is what I had in mind. Hope I haven't misunderstood anything.

'Kniga bude procxitana' would mean "the book will be read" while 'kniga bude cxitat sja' would mean "the book will be being read"

the difference is that procxitana is only possible for perfective passives, while reflexives can be formed out of imperfective verbs

How the hell did you figure out that only perfective verbs can be turned into passive? The life can be lived and the book can be not only written (napisana) but also being written (pisana).

As far as kradnuto/kradeno is concerned, both sound OK and natural to me. What about to others?
BTW, are there any verbs at all that end in -ut but not in -nut?

Hm, you convinced me that "ne-" for indefinite words is potentially confusing (although there is still "n'ekto" for "somebody" in Russian dictionary). So in Slavic dictionaries, I have found the following alternatives:

Russian: -nibud', -to
Ukrainian: -s', -nebud'
Polish: -s'
Czech: -si
Slovak: da-, -si, vol'a-

So I think that final -s is most common. (It should be softened theoretically, but neither my nor iopq's langauge has a soft "s".) Therefore:

kotoris, kotoras, kotoros, kotores, ktos, kogos, czos, kolkos, czijs, jakis, jaks, gdes, kogdas

I know, such pronouns will probably sound completely Finnish to Russians and south Slavs, but there is no other way ...

BTW, iopq, thank you for your links. There I finally found the clearly defined rule about double negations in Slavic:
If the verbs is negated, all indefinite pronouns in the same sentence must also be negated.
Any objection against incorporating this rule into a naturalistic Slavic language?

not in Russian

the book is either pišetsja or napisana
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
as you can see all the lower case matches are Bulgarian and the rest are names

verbs that end in -ut but not -nut:
čut (if we don't use slišat) we'll use the short word rule and use počuti (as in počuti zvuk)
snut has a different etymology, it actually has a sn- root so still short word zasnuti

I think all -ut verbs fall in the short verbs category, and if not, they are usually derivatives of the short word verbs and should be conjugated the same

and negative pronoun agreement is important so we should include that rule

also, Ukrainian has de- forms as in dejakyj
I just noticed that the Russian ne- negative forms are in the genitive (I think, it's late)

So at least n'ekto, n'ečto, are perfectly understandable to pretty much everyone (except Ukrainians :O, probably because n'e > ni). Because Russian n'ekogo, n'ečego would be used for the negative.

Also the forms that are ambiguous can be distinguished because of the negative or positive form of the sentence or by infinitve constructions.
N'egde ležat. nowhere to lie down
N'egde ležu. somewhere I lie

we don't need to necessarily have the first construction in the language, n'egde ležu should be actually enough of a clue
so I changed my mind, it would be too hard to use forms that are mutilated and are not present in South Slavic at all

the other negative would be Nigde ne ležu.

not in Russian

the book is either pi?etsja or napisana
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
as you can see all the lower case matches are Bulgarian and the rest are names

OK. But I am not going to include a complication that isn't omnipresent.

verbs that end in -ut but not -nut:
ÄŤut (if we don't use sli?at) we'll use the short word rule and use poÄŤuti (as in poÄŤuti zvuk)
snut has a different etymology, it actually has a sn- root so still short word zasnuti

I think all -ut verbs fall in the short verbs category, and if not, they are usually derivatives of the short word verbs and should be conjugated the same

Yes, it seems to be so, thanks.

So at least n'ekto, n'eÄŤto, are perfectly understandable

As "some-" or as "no-"? The difference between these two is too big for being deleted. There is no other possibility than ni- for negative pronouns, and either ne- or -s for indefinite pronouns. If ne- is not confusing for Russians, great, but if it is, we must have -s.

By itself n'e- is confusing, but it's not confusing inside a sentence because it requires a different grammatical structure.

If we never use the infinitive construction, we can avoid this confusion.

ne- is not at all confusing. it is you who is confusing yourself.

body = man; kto? man!

ni-kto > no-body > nie-mand

ne-kto > not this body, not this man, so another one > somebody, je-mand

razumijsx? Du verstehen?

negde sest = nowhere to sit
negde sel = somewhere I sat

so what about your brilliant theory?

If we never use the infinitive construction, we can avoid this confusion.

OK. So let's have ne- as indefinite prefix of correlatives and warn Russians that the infinitive construction is not to be used in Slovianski.