Talk:सापडणे

@Kutchkutch Hi, I think the def needs to be expanded a bit. I have not seen an instance where सापडणे means "to find", but rather "to be found": as in बाॅल मला घराच्या आतमध्ये सापडला, which rather than "I found the ball inside the house", means "the ball was found by me inside the house". I think this is a common feature in Indian languages (Hindi, Konkani and even the Dravidian Kannada included) wherein the verb "find" lacks an active voice: you don't "find" something, that thing is "found" by you.
Also, this word, I believe, also means "to be caught (in trouble)". Or is it only in Goan Marathi? I haven't spoken Marathi for some years now, so I'd love to know what you think. -- माधवपंडित (talk) 04:39, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, Hindi (and other Indian languages I'd imagine) does have transitive verbs for "find": ढूँढना (ḍhūṇḍhnā), खोजना (khojnā). English just happened to have "find" as both transitive and intransitive. I agree though; the use of this word is analogous to Hindi मिलना (milnā), since the dative case (like in your sentence मला (malā)) has to be used with it. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 05:57, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@माधवपंडित, AryamanA Dhongde & Wali says "For ‘psychological’ Marathi verbs (as opposed to action verbs) such as those that express knowledge, belief, desire, perception and mental or physical state, the subject is in the dative case." Hindi appears to use the oblique case for these verbs for something like मुझे गेंद मिली. Berntsen marks these verbs as (N-la impers.).

Here is a modified version of that example sentence:

मला चेंडू सापडला

I.DAT ball.NOM.MSG find-PERF-MSG

I found the ball.

Semantically, “I” is the experiencer (logical subject) and “ball” is the theme (logical object) so सापडणे has two arguments. Syntactically, the verb agrees with the theme and isn’t influenced by the experiencer in the dative case other than the fact that it exists (even when omitted like चेंडू सापडला). This would probably be true for मुझे गेंद मिली as well.

I initially just put ‘to find’ for simplicity, but perhaps "to be found" is better way of defining it. Molesworth, Tulpule and Date appear to consider such verbs to be intransitive according to the syntax rather than the semantics.

मला चेंडू सापडला could be interpreted as “the ball was found by me” in English with the passive voice, but मला चेंडू सापडला is in the active voice does not use the passive construction, which would have चेंडू सापडला गेला with the auxiliary verb जाणे (j̈āṇe).

Regarding the other definition, I agree that it’s also “to be caught” and Berntsen, Molesworth, Tulpule and Date all mention it so it should be added. I would use पकडणे (pakaḍṇe) to emphasise "being caught" rather than merely "being found". Kutchkutch (talk) 11:13, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@AryamanA, Kutchkutch: Do ढूँढना and खोजना not mean "to search/look for" instead of "find"?? Also, I have no idea what the intransitive meaning of the English word find is. Anyway, great explanation; it just reminds us again that Indo-Aryan linguistics is not as simple as it first seems. -- माधवपंडित (talk) 12:05, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@माधवपंडित: Oops, I meant active/passive, not transitive and intransitive. Yes, now that I think about it you're right, it's "to search". So I guess there is no active form of "to find" in Hindi. Also, @Kutchkutch, मुझे/मुझको is dative case, मुझ is oblique. The Hindi construction is identical to the Marathi. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 17:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@AryamanA For the Hindi comparison, I was referring to the fact that Hindi appears to have a relatively simplified/reduced case system. There doesn't appear to be a dative at Template:hi-decl-noun corresponding to Marathi -ला/-ना (-lā/-nā). Kutchkutch (talk) 11:39, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

@Kutchkutch: Hindi has retained some more cases only for pronouns; you can see मैं (ma͠i)'s declension table. Actually, all Hindi has done for nouns is separated the cases from the word into postpositions. Until the last century, postpositions like से (se), को (ko) were still joined to the preceding word like in Gujarati and Marathi. A similar process has happened in Punjabi as well. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 14:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)