Thread: Valda - разные вопросы по глаголам

There is a verb "лаять", to bark and a noun "лай", a bark.
Собаки не кусают до/прежде лая. = Dogs don't bite before a bark. (лай in Genitive is лая)

But anyway, I don't like that phrase. I'd say something like: "Собаки сперва лают, потом кусают." or "Собаки не кусают до того, как облают."

What you have found is called "деепричастие", adverbial participle. It is not like English gerund, more like an adverb. It is more complicated to use but if you like...

Лая is (also) an adverbial participle of the imperfective verb лаять and can be translated as "during the process of barking". For your purpose you need perfective AP like "полаяв" (verb "полаять"), which is "after some barking".

So, "Собаки кусают только сначала полаяв" will do.

"Need to look first, then buy," - Покупать нужно, сначала посмотрев. "посмотрев" is an AP of "посмотреть"

APs in Russian are rarely used in speech, they are normally for the literary style.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

But anyway, I don't like that phrase. I'd say something like: "Собаки сперва лают, потом кусают."

Would it be possible to use "лаются" and "кусаются" in this context to emphasize that you're talking about a general tendency? As in Собака кусает меня за руку ("The dog is biting my hand") vs. Осторожно, эта собака кусается ("Beware, this dog has a habit of biting").

Originally Posted by it-ogo

What you have found is called "деепричастие", adverbial participle. It is not like English gerund, more like an adverb.

For some reason, though, LOTS of English-language textbooks refer to the деепричастие as a "gerund" -- even though, as you say, the деепричастие is adverbial in nature, while the "gerund" is a noun in both English and Latin.

(Hmmm, from Googling, I find that in some Romance languages like French and Spanish, the Latin gerund eventually lost its noun-ish nature and developed an adverbial function. So presumably the influence of French explains why "gerund" is used for the деепричастие.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Would it be possible to use "лаются" and "кусаются" in this context to emphasize that you're talking about a general tendency? As in Собака кусает меня за руку ("The dog is biting my hand") vs. Осторожно, эта собака кусается ("Beware, this dog has a habit of biting").

Кусаются is OK here, but лаются is not. You can make reflexive only of transitive verbs, i.e. verbs that can have direct objects. In Russian direct objects are those in Accusative. You can not say лаять кого-то (and then лаять себя = лаяться), correct is лаять на кого-то.

There is another colloquial\vernacular meaning of лаять (to abuse). In this sense it is transitive verb and so лаяться means "to abuse each other" = to quarrel or "to abuse as a general tendency" in vernacular.