User talk:Willwsharp

Russian "concrete" and "abstract" verbs

If the entries concrete verb (= unidirectional) and abstract verb (= multidirectional) can be trusted, your removal of the labels is inappropriate. However these terms don't really seem to be used in linguistic literature in English (or at least I couldn't find anything on Google Books, but I admittedly didn't look very long). Do you think these should be deleted? Pinging the creator, @Stephen G. Brown. --Barytonesis (talk) 00:53, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Barytonesis The labels are correct but they only apply to Slavic verbs, that's why you can't find them in the English literature. You probably won't find masdar or ʾiʿrāb in the English literature either but they are important concepts in the Arabic grammar. I have reverted Willwsharp's edit and protected the page from edit-warring. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:29, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Atitarev: Please see my answer below. --Barytonesis (talk) 11:28, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe they should be removed from the word уйти because уйти does not carry the distinction of direction as described in concrete verb Willwsharp (talk) 01:09, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

That's your opinion only. I am a native speaker and the concept has been supported for years in the English Wiktionary by a number of editos. Your edit-warring may result in a block. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:29, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Willwsharp, I don't know what labels you are referring to. I also don't know what you mean by trusted. As for Google Books, I don't know what you searched for, but I had no trouble finding them: abstract verbs, concrete verbs. Or more specifically, here.

As for уйти, you simply do not understand the meaning of the terms. Unidirectional means, for example, that a person goes from here to there; multidirectional means that a person goes from here to there and then returns to here. уйти means to go from where one is to elsewhere. Anyway, these are, as Atitarev stated, an important feature of Russian grammar. While we don't use them when talking about English grammar, we do when we discuss Russian grammar. Just one more case of a person who reads one article about a language that he is ignorant of, who then decides after reading the article that he is suddenly an expert in said language. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:57, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown: I'm not Willwsharp, so with your first paragraph you're answering to the wrong person. Also, sorry if I offended you in some way, it wasn't my intention.

What I meant to say is this: as I understand it, in Russian, конкретный глагол and абстрактный глагол can be used interchangeably with (i.e. are synonymous with) однонаправленный глагол and разнонаправленный глагол respectively; the question is, is it the same in English? "unidirectional" and "multidirectional" are used all the time; but "concrete verb" and "abstract verb" seem much rarer in that sense. I looked at your two links; the first one is mostly irrelevant because the terms "concrete verb" and "abstract verb" aren't used in the sense that concerns us here. The second one is absolutely relevant, but there isn't much to go by. So my question simply is: if "concrete verb/abstract verb" and "unidirectional verb/multidirectional verb" are synonymous, but the second terminology is used much more often in English, why not change our labels to reflect that, and use "unidirectional/multidirectional"? --Barytonesis (talk) 10:58, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not certain that "multidirectional verb" is always interchangeable with abstract verb. It's been quite a few years since I studied the matter. The common verbs of motion that come immediately to mind are unidirectional or multidirectional, but "multidirectional verb" does not seem to carry the full meaning of abstract verb, because these verbs have other characteristics than simple direction (such as repetition, habituation). In the books and papers that I studied from when learning Russian in my university years in the ’60s and ’70s, abstract and concrete verbs were the terms used, and I see nothing wrong with them. When I ran "multidirectional verbs" and "abstract verbs" through Ngrams, it states: "Ngrams not found: multidirectional verbs." The same with concrete verbs vs. unidirectional verbs ... "unidirectional verbs" are not found. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:37, 3 June 2017 (UTC)