čekat

Discussion in 'Grammar & Pronunciation' started by colineček, Mar 8, 2007.

  1. colineček

    colineček Member

    I am working on the verb čekat (to wait) and using the dictionary tables I have worked out all the declensions but I only understand how to apply the present and past forms. I have no idea what the remaining ones are. Can anyone help me understand their application:
    čekej
    čekejme
    čekejte
    čekaje
    čekajíc
    čekajíce
    čekav
    čekavši
    čekavše
    čekán
    čekána
    čekáno
    čekáni
    čekány
    čekána
    Děkuji mnohokrát
     
  2. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    Conjugation, not declension :)

    I am not sure what you really want... to translate these forms and explain how they are used?
    Or the basic paradigm?

    inf.: čekat
    sg.
    1. čekám
    2. čekáš
    3. čeká
    pl.
    1. čekáme
    2. čekáte
    3. čekají
    imp.: čekej, čekejte, čekejme

    past part.: čekal, čekala, čekalo, čekali, čekaly, čekala
    pass. part.: čekán, čekána, čekáno, čekáni, čekány, čekána
    akt. part.: čekající

    "přechodník" present: čekaje, čekajíc, čekajíce

    "přechodník" past does not exist for this verb!!!

    "přechodníky" are formed in two forms:
    p. present - formed *always* from imperfective verbs
    p. past - formed *always* from perfective verbs

    e.g.:
    čekat (imperfective) - čekaje, čekajíc, čekajíce
    počkat (perfective) - počkav, počkavši, počkavše

    jít (imperfective) - jda, jdouc, jdouce
    přijít (perfective) - přišed, přišedši, přišedše

    the only exception I know about is verb "být" which can assume both forms:
    jsa, jsouc, jsouce
    byv, byvši, byvše

    Note also that "přechodníky" are not used in Czech anymore, only some real dinosaurs (like myself) do use them, mainly in written, but sometimes (extremely rarely) in spoken language. The vast majority of people does not even know the rules of their formation.
    As a foreigner, do not use them, you would sound ridiculous.
     
  3. colineček

    colineček Member

    Yeeeesh! I new that!!! Nouns decline verbs conjugate. I feel very stupid.

    Thanks for your input. You have gone some way to appeasing my lust for clarity.

    I am English, but I am not brilliant at understanding English grammer, and my quest to learn Czech has been much about learning English first.

    My understanding of the imperative in English grammar is that it’s a commanding or instructional verb. Is this the same in Czech?
    čekej (S2. please wait)
    čekejme (P1. please wait)
    čekejte (P2 please wait)

    Also, in the past participle, is this equal to:
    čekal (I waited)
    čekala (she waited)
    čekalo (it waited)
    čekali (M or M/F they waited)
    čekaly (F they waited)
    čekala (Neuter they waited)

    The same would apply to the present participle: waiting

    The active participle is a little trickier for me. I think it means to begin to wait
     
  4. Karel_lerak

    Karel_lerak Well-Known Member

     
  5. Karel_lerak

    Karel_lerak Well-Known Member

    Purely theoretically it exists: čekav, čekavši, čekavše, but nobody would dare to use it 8) 8)
     
  6. colineček

    colineček Member

    Aha! these are singular form past active participles?? How can you have an active participle in the past? Beats me. :?
     
  7. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    What do you mean by active participle? there is nothing like that in Czech... In Czech there is present participle (čekající) functionning as an adjective, past participle (čekal), which is technically a nominal adjective (like "sám") but exists only in copula (in all but 3rd person conjuncted with "být") and passive participle, which works exactly in the same way (but expresses passivity, not past).

    There are also "přechodníky" in Czech which is not really a participle (well... it was a participle and was fully declinable, but today other cases do not exist any more and the only forms refer to the subject).

    *Čekav,*čekavši,*čekavše are hypothetical (the asterisk signifies thei ungrammaticallnes) forms of "čekat" but they do not exist because "čekat" is imperfective verb and can ONLY assume forms "čekaje, čekajíc, čekajíce".
    On the other hand, there is its perfective countrepart "počkat", which can ONLY assume forms "počkav, počkavši, počkavše". You may construct forms like *počkaje, *počkajíc, *počkajíce, but they are absolutely ungrammatical (note that perfective verbs do not even have present tense! how could they assume a present participle!), exactly like English "I *loosed, I *buyed, I *knowed, I *be-ed" (well not good example because in English, it is due to verbal irregularity, in Czech those forms simply do not exist, so better example would be rather "two *specieses, two *sheeps, two *fishes" or hypothetical passive form of word "be" like "*I was been").

    But... well, the only "přechodník" you need is the feminine form of present "přechodník" (in this case: "čekajíc"). Not that it was used, not at all, but from this form you can very simply deduce the form of present participle (čekající) which is still in use (but often it is better to substitute by another clause). All other forms are from archaic Czech ("přechodníky", participles of past "přechodníky" (that is words like "počkavší") and so on). I advise you not to concern yourself about them at all.
     
  8. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    English so called "past participle" is not really a past participle, it is passive participle as it does not refer to past... It is true that it can sometimes imply that it happened in the past (I am hit = someone hit me) but it can refer to present as well (I am being hit = someone is hitting me). I do not know why you call it pst participle, but maybe it is only because there is present participle (-ing forms) whose name is purely traditional from latin grammar (which had only active participles, because the passive was in most cases expressed with a simple verb; e.g. scribo = I write x scribor = I am being written). But in English it is only active participle and passive participle
    (a thing doing st. = a thing which does x a thing done = a thing that someone else does). Passivity does not imply past.

    In Czech, there are many participles:
    present participle: čekající (simple adjective) = waiting
    past participle I: čekal (nominal adjective) = (he) waited (but in English it is not a participle)
    passive participle: čekán (nominal adjective) = (he is) waited
    past participle II: počkavší (simple adjective) = having waited
    + "přechodníky" present and past who were participles long ago
     
  9. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    I agree.
    I disagree. This is absolutely grammatical. It is future transgressive. It is even more archaic than other transgressives, but still correct.
     
  10. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    I do not know whether it is future transgressive (something like future participle?) but it is not correct now. This form is not in existence already!
    If you accept it, you legalise forms "čekav,...etc." because even these forms once existed (before 14th century I think). What existed once may be incorrect now.
     
  11. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    Well, this is not given by your decree. Common codifacations of standard Czech state the opposite. (Unfortunately, there is no codification on the net, so start here for example.)
    It IS!!!

    Just try to ban the third tempting of Christ "Toto všechno ti dám, jestliže PADNA, budeš se mi klaněti." and you will be sent away with a flea in your ear!
     
  12. Karel_lerak

    Karel_lerak Well-Known Member

    Your text is from Bible Kralická from the year 1613.
    Ekumenický překlad (1979):
    "Toto všechno ti dám, padneš-li přede mnou a budeš se mi klanět"
     
  13. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    More precisely, it's from its modern revision 1964. The version from 1619 has different word order. But what's the problem with the age? It is still one of two most used versions. And the quote is well-known in this form among christians regardless the version of Bible they use.
     
  14. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    [tone="sarcastic irony"]Never heard that Wikipedia is modern Czech codification but maybe I have been mistaken[/tone]

    My source is Czech national corpus SYN2005 (see http://ucnk.ff.cuni.cz) where I did not found any, not a one, example of transgressive (great that I know how to say "přechodník" in English) with present forme derived from perfective verb. Czech national corpus is not codifying but it very good representative source about contemporary Czech language (100 000 000 word forms, fully lemmatised and tagged).

    I searched through diacorp and the only three examples were forms (2x) "padna" and "přiveda" (no other verb I tried was found) from 1828 (textbook for chemistry) where it was incorrectly used (marked in the corpus), from text called "Obracení pohanů v Jáponě" from 1585 and from "Řeči besední" (Tomáš Štítný ze Štítného, 14th century).

    I really appreciate your interest in historic Czech but your future transgressive is in use no more... and if there is someone who tries to learn our little language we should not confuse him by those obsolete, however marvelous, forms.

    addendum:
    corpus SYN2005 (100 000 000 lexical items):
    24 388 occurences of transgressives both present and past
    337 696 occurences of verbal adjectives derived from transgressives both present and past (of whom only 1318 are from the past transgressive)
    0 occurences of verbal adjectives derived from present transgressive of perfective verb
    0 occurences of present transgressive of perfective verb (there is no possibility to ask corpus directly about "future transgressive" as there is none in contemporary Czech, so I had to ask for verb; present transgressive; perfective)

    addendum II:
    corpus SYN2000 (100 000 000 lexical items, lemmatised, tagged but the technology is on lower level than for SYN2005; there is no possibility to ask on the verbal aspect; the composition is different: more jurnalistic texts, less literature)

    28 731 occurences of transgressives both present and past
    318236 occurences of verbal adjectives derived from transgressives both present and past (of whom only 1447 are from the past transgressive)
    -----------------------
    -----------------------
    corpora SYN2000 and SYN2005, texts only from 1990 and later:
    (312212+322999) = 635211 occurences of verbal adjectives derived from transgressives both present and past
    (26803+20961) = 47764 occurences of transgressives both present and past

    conclusion: there is a ration between transgressives and verbal adjectives higher than 1:10 (in both corpora), and 1:13 in corpora concerning texts only from from 1990 and later, from which data I deem myself capable of judging that the category of transgressive is marginal in Czech.
     
  15. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    Next time, try to meditate upon implications of my statements. In this way you can evoid contradicting my statements (e.g. "there is no codification on the net"). :roll:

    Sorry, I can give you a link to my Stručná mluvnice česká. :roll:

    First, you must be interested in it. :wink:

    Try theological texts, even the modern ones. There ARE future transgressives.

    Or, browse through legal texts (even most recent law and judicates), there is big need for exact description of chronological succession. You can find phrases like: "... policie přijmouc podání postoupí záležitost do 24 hodin dozorujícímu státnímu zástupci..."

    In the case you are interested in mathematics, you surely know Jarník's Diferenciální počet. It is full of future transgressives in phrases like: "Větu dokážeme vyšetříce extrémy funkce..."

    The future transgressives are NOT frequent, therefor your frequency analisys is useless. But they are still in use, they are correct and they are codified.
     
  16. Eleshar

    Eleshar Well-Known Member

    Well... examples you gave are... wrong.

    Transgressive has relative temporal meaning to that of the main clause.

    "... policie přijmouc podání postoupí záležitost do 24 hodin dozorujícímu státnímu zástupci..."
    I suppose, the police will pass the affaire *after* they receive it, not before, so it should be "Policie přijmuvši (maje přijato) podání podstoupí záležitost..."

    "Větu dokážeme vyšetříce extrémy funkce..."
    The same case, I suppose the sentence will be proven *after* examining of the extremities of the function, so it should be "Větu prokážeme vyšetřivše (maje vyšetřeny) extrémy funkce"

    You have chosen examples written by people who did not use transgressives correctly (btw., thelanguage of law is somehow different from that of common use, there are many expressions originated from misuse of standard language, like "zrušuje" instead of "ruší").

    I explained myself how I had been looking for them. I did my best, yet I found nothing. In my opinion, a verb form that is not used even once in 200 000 000 words is irrelevant and is rather an anachronistic aberration. And I am sorry, I do not respond for the composition of Czech national corpus, I am a mere user instructed in a special seminary how to use it. But what I can tell you is that Czech national corpus is generally considered one of the most balanced and representative by internatinal corpus linguistic community.
     
  17. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    No Eleshar, they are correct, you misunderstood it.

    First of all, let me to correct your transgressives. Policie is feminine, thus policie majíc. The subject of the Jarník's sententence is in plural, thus dokážeme majíce.

    No, you suppose wrong.

    I wrote the chronological succession is very important in legal texts, let me demonstrate the meaning of all three variants.

    ... policie přijmuvši podání postoupí záležitost do 24 hodin dozorujícímu státnímu zástupci... ~ the police is obliged to hand the matter over within 24 hours after they close the acceptation - i.e. you could be a victim of police obstruction during the acceptation

    ... policie přijímajíc podání postoupí záležitost do 24 hodin dozorujícímu státnímu zástupci... ~ the police is obliged to hand the matter over in the case the process of acceptation is longer than 24 hours - i.e. you could be victim of an investigation without supervision in the case the acceptation is finished within 24 hours

    ... policie přijmouc podání postoupí záležitost do 24 hodin dozorujícímu státnímu zástupci... ~ the police is obliged to hand the matter over within 24 hours after they start the acceptation - i.e. you are sure the case is supervised

    Again, you suppose wrong. The function extrema are examined within the proof. The proof starts with this sentence and following examination of function extrema.

    Well, these examples are correct, but you are right that the transgressives (becoming quite popular in last years) are often used incorrectly.

    What's wrong about using of the verb zrušovat? Its meaning differs slightly from rušit.
     
  18. GlennInFlorida

    GlennInFlorida Well-Known Member

    I am enjoying reading these discussions, although I must admit I don't have a clue what you are talking about. I'm sure there are those (linguists, I suppose) who discuss the English Language in this sort of detail, but I don't know any. My background and work is very technical in nature and has little exposure to such linguistic nuances (although past discussions of theoretical mathematics did get a little dicey).
    I saw the the reference to "our little language" - it is true that Czech is not spoken by a great many people, but it is certainly not "little". It is a very dynamic, expressive language with shadings that just don't exist in English. If other Slavic languages are equally complex, I understand why there was such hand wringing over the wording of treaties during the "Cold War". The different use of one verb (although translated essentially the same in English) could change the fundamental meaning of a clause.
    Well, keep it up - I will continue to read and enjoy. Thanks.
     
  19. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    Natch!:D Now imagine the European Constitution being adopted. It was supposed :roll: to be of identical validity in all official languages of EU - an absolute babel :twisted:. I compared some articles in the Polish version. Both Czech and Polish versions are correct translations of the English version, but the Polish one contradicts the Czech one. I can't judge all language versions, but I can imagine the chaos :twisted:.
    I think a legal text should be valid in one single language and all other versions schould be considered to be nothing but an informative translation.
     
  20. GlennInFlorida

    GlennInFlorida Well-Known Member

    Yes, and the way world economies are going, that language may well be Chinese :wink:
     

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