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From: kriha_p@actrix.gen.nz (Paul J. Kriha)
Subject: Re: Russian accusative with infinitive
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Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 18:24:36 GMT
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In article <3jqa65$pfs@overload.lbl.gov>,
   veklerov@spindle.ee.lbl.gov (Eugene Veklerov) wrote:
>In article <cto.794821127@olicom> cto@olicom.olicom.dk (Claus Toendering) 
writes:
>>Does Russian have an equivalent of the English accusative with infinitive?
>>In other words, can you translate "I heard him sing" thus: "Ya slyshal
>>yego pet'"?
>
>No, and it took me a lot of time to get used to English phrases,
>such as "I heard him sing".  The best Russian translation I can
>come up with is "Ya slyshal kak on pel".  Translated back into
>English, it is "I heard how he sang".
>
>Eugene Veklerov

That's interesting.  Some other Slavic languages use
accusative with infinitive quite frequently.

It is, for example, commonly used in Czech.
"I heard him sing" would be "Slysel jsem ho zpivat".

The non-infinitive constructs, like
"Slysel jsem ho jak zpiva" or "Slysel jsem ho kdyz zpival"
have subtly different meaning:
"I heard him how (well or bad) he sang" or "I heard him when
(on the particular occasion we've been talking about and
only when he did do it) he sang".

Paul JK
