Slovak: Agreement between subjects and predicate & a similarity of the number of nouns

[Concise]

Examples I found:

1. Kde parkuje autobus a taxíky?

2. … ale radšej živé ako umelú reč. (NB: so more than one living languague)

Is my interpretation is correct if I say that in Slovak one has to always agree

1. the grammatical number and person of the predicate with the closest subject if there are more,
2. and similarly the grammatical number of a noun is defined only by that of the instances of the closest sub-group if one speaks about more sub-groups of this noun distinguished by different qualifiers?

 

[Awwal12]

the grammatical number and person of the predicate with the closest subject if there are more,

Syntax-wise, it's a single compound subject, united by a conjunction. Sadly, I cannot tell much about Slovak for sure, but in such cases Russian allows variation (i.e. agreement with the first member or with the entire subject) if the verb precedes the compound subject (in principle, the first pattern may be analyzed as a form of ellipsis: kde parkuje autobus a [kde parkujú] taxíky), but strictly demands agreement with the whole subject when the verb follows it in the sentence. Slovak might work in a similar manner, but let's just wait for native speakers.

Out of curiosity, couldn't you provide the entire sentence from where the second fragment has been taken?

 

[Concise]

Ja sa tiež učím cudzie jazyky, ale radšej živé ako umelú reč.

 

[Awwal12]

Aha... and I wondered why I cannot parse it. Looks like a clear case of ellipsis to me.
Ja sa tiež učím cudzie jazyky, ale radšej živé [jazyky] ako umelú reč.
Essentially, 'živé' (acc.inan.masc.pl.) must be agreeing with 'jazyky' here.

 

[Concise]

So not “Ja sa tiež učím cudzie jazyky, ale radšej živé [reči] ako umelú reč.” ???

 

[Awwal12]

So not “Ja sa tiež učím cudzie jazyky, ale radšej živé [reči] ako umelú reč.” ???

The thing about ellipsis is that it usually deletes something that is (roughly) repeated, i.e. something that has already occured before in the text (in the same form, or in a really close one). However, it's difficult to imagine elliptical deletion of something that has yet to appear afterwards (it would make no sense pragmatically)!

 

[Concise]

I did not challenge the meaning of ellipsis, I say that one can say in many the following without any precedents:

“I rather learn some living/natural [languages] than an artificial languague.”

In English the adjective cannot be put in plural, of course.

In Hungarian you can choose whether you want to put “languages” in the first part of the sentence or “language” at the end of the sentence, and you omit the other.

And we call ellipsis both versions.

 

[Awwal12]

I did not challenge the meaning of ellipsis, I say that one can say in many the following without any precedents:

“I rather learn some living/natural [languages] than an artificial languague.”

I'm not a native English speaker, of course, but this particular sentence sounds pretty bad to me, and it doesn't seem that "some A1 than a A2" can be found in Google at all (I checked for several pairs of adjectives), which is pretty telling. Of course, English fundamentally allows "a A1 than a A2" sequence, though in more specific circumstances. Russian easily allows "(лучше/скорее/...) A1 чем A2 N", but there's a catch: the adjectives/participles must be in the same form (so essentially the whole structure can be re-analyzed as a compound attributive of a specific kind rather than a cataphoric ellipsis of the noun, which analysis seems fundamentally applicable to the English structures as well). I strongly suspect that Slovak functions in a generally similar manner.

 

[Concise]

“I'm not a native English speaker, of course, but this particular sentence sounds pretty bad to me,”

Take it as a Hungarian sentence translated to English on a word by word basis hoping that this logics works not just in Hungarian, but in Slovak, too.

 

[Awwal12]

Take it as a Hungarian sentence translated to English on a word by word basis hoping that this logics works not just in Hungarian

What's bothering me is that Hungarian adjectives not only have no agreement with the head nouns, but also start to function as nouns themselves when there's no overt head noun (seizing all the noun affixes in particular). I'm not sure that could count as normal ellipsis of the head nouns at all, which might also explain the syntactical differences.

 

[Concise]

I am not strong in grammar at this level we touched, so looked for some help, and here it is: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/58509/1/9789048556038.pdf

Having spent just little time with it, without really being consumed with it ;-) I can say that Hungarian is not a good mother language for those who want to learn these foreign languages (English or Slavic ones), because Hungarian seems either too liberal, or works just in the opposite way, or liberal, but in a different way.

but strictly demands agreement with the whole subject when the verb follows it in the sentence.

From the book (page 35):
“4.1. Preverbal versus postverbal conjoined subjects

Whereas preverbal conjoined singular subjects can trigger either singular or plural agreement, see (15a), postverbal conjoined singulars may only agree with a singular verb, see (15b).

(15) a. [Péter és Mari] sétáltak / sétált.
Péter and Mari walk.Past.3Pl / walk.Past.3Sg
‘Péter and Mari walked.’

b. Sétált / *sétáltak Péter és Mari.
walk.Past.3Sg walk.Past.3Pl Péter and Mari

The verb bears plural agreement if either one or both of the postverbal conjuncts are
plural; it is only singular if both conjuncts are singular:

(16) a. *Sétált / sétáltak Péter és a gyerekek.
walk.Past.3Sg/ walk.Past.3Pl Péter and the children
‘Péter and the children walked.’

b. *Sétált/ sétáltak a felnőttek és a gyerekek. walk.Past.3Sg/ walk.Past.3Pl the adults and the children
‘The adults and the children walked.’”

* denotes an incorrect version

The thing about ellipsis is that it usually deletes something that is (roughly) repeated, i.e. something that has already occured before in the text (in the same form, or in a really close one). However, it's difficult to imagine elliptical deletion of something that has yet to appear afterwards (it would make no sense pragmatically)!

From page 147:

“4.2. Two directions of ellipsis
Hungarian coordinated clauses may contain forward and backward ellipsis. If the licensing clause precedes the clause containing ellipsis, we have forward ellipsis. If the licensing clause follows the elliptic one, it is a case of backward ellipsis.”

From page 154:

“Structures ill-formed as forward ellipsis may become grammatical as backward ellipsis. Let us first examine ill-formed forward nominal ellipsis and ill-formed forward adverbial ellipsis:
……

As cases of backward ellipsis the sentences become well-formed:

(378) a.
Te eladtál egy ꞌꞌOLCSÓ [autót], én meg vettem egy you sell.Past.3Sg a cheap car.Acc I and buy.Past.1Sg an ꞌꞌDRÁGA autót.
expensive car.Acc
‘You sold a cheap car and I bought an expensive one.’”

What's bothering me is that Hungarian adjectives not only have no agreement with the head nouns, but also start to function as nouns themselves when there's no overt head noun (seizing all the noun affixes in particular).

I guess you are right. If there is no head noun, so we have a backward ellipsis, either there is some sort of agreement (eg. the Hungarian equivalent of “some” always requires singular, so when we use “I learned some living than an artificial language” there is a hidden agreement+++), or the adjective is inflected. We put the sign of plural at the end of the adjective and also another suffix to express the accusative case.



In Hungarian the adjective is not inflected normally if there is a noun beside it, only the noun, so the inflection of the adjective shows that it became a sort of noun.

adjective + noun:
élő nyelv-(e)k-(e)t = living language-s-null

only adjective: élő-k-(e)t= living-null-null (ones)


—————

+++ it was a sort of trap for me when I translated the original Slovak sentence for me, because when we use numerals before a noun we never put the noun in plural, so I did not miss the lack of agreement. The other trap was that my mind could accept that an adjective in plural became a sort of noun.

Thank you for clearing me out of these traps.

 

[Concise]

However, it's difficult to imagine elliptical deletion of something that has yet to appear afterwards (it would make no sense pragmatically)!

Referring back to your sentence about how the ellipsis in Slavic languages works let me raise an example where there are more adjectives of the same noun:

“Jazykom/-mi rozoznávame chuť sladkú, kyslú, horkú, slanú, trpkú.”

Does the inverse word order come from this rule that in normal word order there would be a sort of backward ellipsis due to having 5 adjectives, and it would be clumsy since there is no backward ellipsis in Slavic?

Or is it a totally different case when the inverse word order is just for some sort of stressing?

Frankly speaking when I saw this sentence it seemed strange.
In my mother language we can also put “chuť” before the adjectives, but in this case the adjectives become inflected nouns and not mirroring accusative, but another case. Like “With tounge(s) we feel the taste as sweet(ness), sour(ness)….”

 

[Awwal12]

I'm afraid different Slavic languages may have consiberably different communicative strategies and word order. Still, I don't see how this particular sentence is connected to ellipsis.

 

[francisgranada]

Syntax-wise, it's a single compound subject, united by a conjunction.... but in such cases Russian allows variation (i.e. agreement with the first member or with the entire subject) ....

Yes, approximately this is the case also in Slovak, but the agreement with the first member occurs rather in the colloquial speech, at least I think so ...

kde parkuje autobus a [kde parkujú] taxíky ...

"Kde parkuje autobus a kde parkujú taxíky?" is grammatically surely the best solution.

1. Kde parkuje autobus a taxíky?

It is possible and used. However, for me it does not sound very well, I'd prefer the plural "Kde parkujú autobus a taxíky?" ...

2. … ale radšej živé ako umelú reč.

Without any context, it is not correct. The problem is that the adjective "živé" here seems to refer to "umelú reč", which would be obviously ungrammatical.

It should be "radšej živé reči ako umelú reč". In this case we simply compare two things, independently if they are in singular or plural.

Ja sa tiež učím cudzie jazyky, ale radšej živé ako umelú reč.

This is possible because "živé" is spontaneously related to "cudzie (reči)".

“Jazykom/-mi rozoznávame chuť sladkú, kyslú, horkú, slanú, trpkú.”

Here "jazykom" is better then "jazykmi", as normally one has an only tongue ...

Your sentence is possible. But strictly speaking, I'd prefer the following versions:
"Jazykom rozoznávame chute: sladkú, kyslú, horkú, slanú, trpkú".
"Jazykom rozoznávame sladkú, kyslú, horkú, slanú a trpkú chuť".

What's bothering me is that Hungarian adjectives not only have no agreement with the head nouns, but also start to function as nouns themselves when there's no overt head noun (seizing all the noun affixes in particular). I'm not sure that could count as normal ellipsis of the head nouns at all, which might also explain the syntactical differences.

Withou entering into details, the Hungarian (aglutinative) logic is surely different from the Indo-European. The substance is that the basic (unmarked) forms of words tend to be "neutral" from the grammatical point of view. The consequenses are that the so called "case endings" and the plural marker appear only once, at the end of the word or a complex construction, there is no formal difference between nouns and adjectives, there is no agreement, often the singular is used when in IE languages the plural is needed, etc....

 

[Concise]

Your sentence is possible.

Bur when and why is “my sentence” is used? I mean it is not a sentence I created, someone used it, but what implies the word order in that case?

Here "jazykom" is better then "jazykmi", as normally one has an only tongue ...

It is from an exercise, so the learner has to choose whether singular or plural.