Talk:abstract verb

RFC discussion: March 2011–January 2018

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abstract verb

March 2011 discussion

Reads like an encyclopedic article. -- Prince Kassad 08:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

More like a primer, IMHO. Is it worth clean up, rather than RfD? DCDuring TALK 16:10, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Dunno. en.wikipedia doesn't have it, so maybe it should be transwikied. -- Prince Kassad 16:13, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

But is it correct? My "Harrap's English Grammar" makes no mention of them. SemperBlotto 16:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

That might be an RfV question. There is usage of the collocation among linguists, but it is hard to say how consistent among uses and with our sense. DCDuring TALK 17:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Could this be a tail wagging its dog? Is it a misleading calque of something meaningful in Russian? DCDuring TALK 17:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems it would need a context of something like "(in Russian grammar)". Much other usage doesn't seem to correspond to this sense, AFAICT, but I definitely could be wrong. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

@Rua, Atitarev Is the "Slavic grammar" sense one you are familiar with? Is it correct? Does it need to be trimmed / condensed any? - -sche (discuss) 22:45, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize there was a second thread. I've moved them to be together. - -sche (discuss) 23:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@-sche: The concept is entirely related to some Slavic verbs of motion and no other verbs in other languages. I have suggested to use only Slavic examples, instead of English. The clueless message "abstract in Russian but not in Polish" in the entry only confirms that editors are either confused with English sentences or have no idea at all.

я ходи́л на по́чту ― ja xodíl na póčtu ― I went to the post office. (abstract)

я (по)шёл на по́чту ― ja (po)šól na póčtu ― I went to the post office. (concrete)

The Polish equivalents are no different from Russian. Polish sentences "chodziłem do poczty" or "(po)szedłem do poczty", if translated into into English show no notion of abstractness or concreteness but the Slavic sentences do. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:57, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I see! Thank you. I've removed the unhelpful English example sentences. I guess the entry is cleaned up at this point. - -sche (discuss) 21:19, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

March 2013 discussion

Tagged but not listed. What exactly is the problem here? Abstract and concrete verbs are a feature of some verbs in Slavic languages, verbs of movement - go, run, swim, roll, fly, etc.

For example, in Russian бежать (bežátʹ, “to run”) is a concrete verb and бегать (bégatʹ, “to run”) is an abstract verb. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

"Abstract verb refers to a verbal aspect in verbs of motion"? Are we defining it, or mentioning it while talking about something else? I would reword it, but I haven't been able to untangle it enough, yet, to figure out what it actually means. By the way: "Abstract verb" should be in quotes- assuming it should be there at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, I've untangled it, but it's still pretty wordy, and would probably be better if split up into smaller sentences. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:39, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

(before edit conflict)I see you have changed the definition just now. Is this satisfactory?

The user examples given are in English, not sure if the notion of "abstract verb" and "concrete verb" are applicable to English verbs. I only know this concept in terms of Slavic languages, no other. As shown above abstract and concrete verbs differ in forms and cause difficulty to foreign learners, e.g. "I'm flying"", "I will go" in translations may use one or the other verb type or both may be acceptable in some contexts.

(after edit conflict). The concept is complicated, I will search for better definitions. Still don't see how this can explained using English verbs. Any help is appreciated. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

BTW, abstract and concrete verbs are not too many. It's not a complete list but you can have a look at: Category:Russian concrete verbs and Category:Russian abstract verbs. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't address the issue of Slavic languages vs. English. I would say that English is good for explaining the concepts to English speakers, even though there's nothing in the morphology to reflect the difference. I suppose, though, that it might give the false impression that English has this as part of its grammar. As for language-specificity: there seem to me to be enough idiosyncratic details in the concept to make it unlikely to be found elsewhere in the same form, but I could be wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The concept of abstract/concrete with English verbs doesn't make sense, since the verbs don't differ depending on the situation, IMHO. Take verbs плыть (plytʹ) (concrete) vs плавать (plávatʹ) (abstract). Note that the verb tense (present simple or present continuous) is irrelevant here, "плавать (plavatʹ)" is a "generic" verb but not in terms of time but direction)

1. Я плыву к берегу (Ja plyvú k béregu) (concrete, unidirectional). - "I'm swimming to the shore".
2. Я плаваю по субботам (Ja plávaju po subbótam) (abstract, multidirectional) - "I swim on Saturdays".
3. Я плаваю/Я плыву (Ja plávaju/Ja plyvú) (abstract/concrete - either type is OK). - "I'm swimming". The former means "swim around", the latter "swim in a direction". The difference in meaning is blurred but the forms are very distinct. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, if there's that much missing from the concept in the English examples, I guess there's no reason to use them. It's generally helpful to explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, but not if it means leaving things out. I won't be much help in that area, though: I was only able to squeeze in one quarter of Russian as I was getting ready to graduate from UCLA- and I was taking Armenian and second-year German at the same time. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think of adding user examples like I did for "tone sandhi", a concept only applicable to tonal languages. Although I find that box on the right is hard to read now. My original version was this. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

As commonly used in English the expression is almost certainly SoP. I think the scope of non-SoP usage in language needs to be better delineated. For example, David Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (5th ed) does not include abstract verb, though it has abstract in a sense that might cover this. The English usage examples could fit under the SoP sense ({{&lit}}). Perhaps the scope needs to be limited to the languages for which the abstract/concrete distinction is morphological. It would also help if there were citations in the entry. The would be suggestive of in what usage contexts the term was used in a non-SoP way. DCDuring TALK 09:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

This is not an RFD or RFV page and "abstract verb" is a grammatical term, like collective numeral or comparative degree, etc., not a SoP. Only this term has little to do with the English grammar, like instrumental case. The examples and explanation match exactly how Slavic abstract and concrete verbs are defined. I'm not surprised that English dictionaries don't include this term or words like "measure word", which is used to describe grammar in other languages, not English. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Citations and usage examples (not just conceptual examples, which are like images) are supposed to be part of every entry and would help here to show the scope of coverage of the word. As the term is used almost exclusively in a very SoP ways and as there is no dictionary coverage, we really need to show usage. DCDuring TALK 10:30, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I could add user examples (translations from Russian grammar books) but I'll have trouble with citations from the web. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:52, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The only cites that CFI requires are for the term "abstract verb" itself. I could be wrong, but I would think that any explanation of it in an English-language grammar about a Slavic language would be a use, rather than a mention: it's a grammatical term, and the book would be using it to explain a grammatical subject. As long as the book is durably archived, somewhere, it doesn't have to be online. Of course, it would have to be in English, since this is all about the English term. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Three cites need to be of a single non-SoP sense. Usually that means that the wording shouldn't by too specific to make sure that enough authors use it with the definition, but the needs to be more than a transformation of abstract + verb. For some reason we seem to be really good at seeing the idiomaticity of terms in the areas of linguistics and computing, so it shouldn't be too hard. DCDuring TALK 04:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)