Thread: Using ли in question sentences?

Originally Posted by ac220

пропустил бы такую фразу не подумав, попадись она так, в разговоре.

And while we`re at it what exactly is that? It's used all the time, in the literature at least, but... Why imperative with 3rd person to express a condition? (or rarely, a suddenness of an action) I vaguely recall that this is a remnant of an old verb tense, but I'm not really sure.

А случись что, кто отвечать будет? Ты, что ли?
А он возьми, да и заяви, - "Отнюдь, одиннадцать частей у быка"!
Попадись мне такой в тёмном переулке, я бы со страху помер...

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by ac220

By the way, while mining lib.ru for other examples of usage, I've found something really unusual:

Никто не знал о нашей связи, за это я вам ручаюсь, хотя так никогда и не бывает.

I don't see anything unusual in this example.

+1
"Хотя и" + "так не бывает" = "хотя так и не бывает"

Если склеить без перестановки, получится, что "хотя и" относится к "так", а это другой смысл.

Originally Posted by ac220

And while we`re at it what exactly is that? It's used all the time, in the literature at least, but... Why imperative with 3rd person to express a condition? (or rarely, a suddenness of an action) I vaguely recall that this is a remnant of an old verb tense, but I'm not really sure.

А начиналось все с "Using ли in question sentences?"

Это очень интересно.

У меня еще один вопрос. Какая разница между этими двумя словами/фразами:

никогда
так и не + глагол в прошедшем времени.

Спацибо!

(И я, вероятно, не пойму ответы на русском языке по етой теме!)

Originally Posted by russiannewb

Это очень интересно.

У меня еще один вопрос. Какая разница между этими двумя словами/фразами:

никогда
так и не + глагол в прошедшем времени.

Спасибо!

(И я, вероятно, не пойму ответы на русском языке в этой теме!)

The difference is quite big, actually. Hmm, it doesn't seem that big only if you translate them into English...
никогда is just "never"
так и не... is a construction which indicates that an action never happened, although it was about to happen. For example, "He wanted to make her a declaration of love, but, however, he never did": Он хотел признаться ей в любви, но так и не признался.
If you say "Он никогда не признавался (признался doesn't fit here) ей в любви", it would only mean the fact that there never was a declaration. It doesn't mean he was going to. It doesn't even mean that he ever loved her. Just there was no declaration, that's all.

Originally Posted by russiannewb

Это очень интересно.

У меня еще один вопрос. Какая разница между этими двумя словами/фразами:

никогда
так и не + глагол в прошедшем времени.

Спацибо!

(И я, вероятно, не пойму ответы на русском языке по етой теме!)

Those phrases can even be used together: Он пообещал, но так никогда и не сделал. He promised, still never did it.

Sorry for Russian offtopic in your thread. Here starting from the answer we often go to offtopic conversations with each other.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

Those phrases can even be used together: Он пообещал, но так никогда и не сделал.

As Оля have said, it sounds like a translation from English.

Он никогда этого не делал (imperfective) - He never did it before
Он так этого и не сделал (perfective) - He had to do it, bit never did it

[quote=it-ogo]

Originally Posted by "Оля":9apdd329

Originally Posted by ac220

By the way, while mining lib.ru for other examples of usage, I've found something really unusual:

Никто не знал о нашей связи, за это я вам ручаюсь, хотя так никогда и не бывает.

I don't see anything unusual in this example.

+1
"Хотя и" + "так не бывает" = "хотя так и не бывает"
[/quote:9apdd329]
Aha. How exactly "никогда" got there, if you yourself avoided it in your own re-phrasing? Exactly Bulgakov's phrase works in exactly the context it was used in, no doubt, but why does it sound natural?

And yes, Оля's explanation of difference between the "так и не" and "никогда" is right on.

It wouldn't work with other tense/aspect combinations though: "так не бывает", "так и не бывает", "так никогда не бывает"... It's something else. I can't explain the difference well, but it exists.

Originally Posted by ac220

Exactly Bulgakov's phrase works in exactly the context it was used in, no doubt, but why does it sound natural?

I keep wondering what strange do you find in that phrase.
Type "никогда и не бывает" in Google and you'll see a lot of examples which all sound absolutely natural.

By the way, it's another construction. (If that's what confuses you here). "Он так и не позвонил ей" and "Так и не бывает никогда" are different constructions and have nothing to do with each other.

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by ac220

Exactly Bulgakov's phrase works in exactly the context it was used in, no doubt, but why does it sound natural?

I keep wondering what strange do you find in that phrase.

Mainly, that in context it seems a perfectly OK phrase, useful in other similar contexts, but exactly this one "так никогда и не бывает" was used by just a handful of people on the whole Net, as if people are avoiding it and preferring paraphrases. There ought to be orders of magnitude more uses. It's even rarer than "центральноамериканский" ! This might be some weird artifact of the way search engines work, of course... (ADD: At first I indeed thought that it's similar to "так никогда и не решил " but it is not, you're right. And that makes this aversion even more weird.)

Anyway, this is off-topic here.

Originally Posted by ac220

It's even rarer than "центральноамериканский" !

For "центральноамериканский" Google gives me 23800 results, and for "никогда и не бывает" it gives me 2 020 000 results.

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by ac220

It's even rarer than "центральноамериканский" !

For "центральноамериканский" Google gives me 23800 results, and for "никогда и не бывает" it gives me 2 020 000 results.

"так никогда и не бывает" Again, i mean the entire phrase. Just "никогда и не быавает" is indeed that common.

"так никогда и не бывает" is different. Google claims 264 000 hits, but actually displays circa 10 results that aren't quotes from Bulgakov. If one uses more advanced err... googlemancy, with searches like ["так никогда и не бывает" баскетбол] or ["так никогда и не бывает" самолёт] it's still 10 times less common than "так никогда не бывает" sometimes much worse than that.

Originally Posted by ac220

"так никогда и не бывает" Again, i mean the entire phrase. Just "никогда и не быавает" is indeed that common.

I don't see any difference between так никогда и не бывает and
такого никогда и не бывает
никогда и не бывает, чтобы...
никогда и не бывает так[, чтобы...]
никогда и не бывает такого[, чтобы...]
такого и не бывает никогда

and so on.

All these are the same construction. You can't put them all in Google as a single construction, but that's what they are. There is nothing unusual or unnatural about them. I don't understand why you are so crazy about that particular phrase.

I'm not really. It's just mild surprise and interest. If I were "crazy" about it, I would have already done something more involved than a few dozens of Google searches.