Comments on: Border Patrol

By: Lucia Balazova

Lucia Balazova — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:45:20 +0000

We’ve defined the content listemes as- something we build upon that carry the meaning, they carry the main point of the message we want to send
and functional listemes- they restrict and organize the meaning, providing the structure, that helps us to communicate better the message.
Let’s talk about the “Milujem ta”
It is thru that Slovak has a great number of related words, that all contain –mil. We forgot to mansion- milion, miliarda, milenium- which might also have the positive connotation. But I’ve also found 1 word, with rather negative connotation- mílka (mistake), míla (mile)
And because of the great number of related –mil words, I would also divide Milujem ta in to 1. content list. mil, 2. functional listm ujem, 3. functional listem ta

By: Zuzana Ulicna

Zuzana Ulicna — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 16:12:13 +0000

Hi Mark.

I would like to comment on Border Patrol.

Whether you can express this feeling of love by 3,2words or 1 word,what’s matter is if you really mean it. The base of the word milujem is mil- as all versions of this verb share the same stem mil-. e.g. mil-ujem,mil-oval,mil-uješ. However, it is difficult to decide whether this is right explanation as a listeme is the smallest unit of meaning in language. Can it be also milu- or miluje-? When we look at the word milovať,-lovať is derived from the word love, it is meaningful unit,the boundary of the content listeme would then be miluje- . That’s why it might be confusing.
I would be more positive about the posiibility of mil- as content listeme.
I already commented the usage of milujem and now
I asked some of my friends, when do they use it. Most of them say this sentence only to their partners-boyfriends, girlfriends, they trully love.(only very rarely in connection with concrete/abstract things.The reason for this is maybe in element of sexual desire, because when you make love you say- milovali sme sa…and you do that only with your partner.
When we have three expressions(mám rád,milujem,ľúbim) to differ feelings towards people and things,why don’t we do that?
BTW also British people use I love stg/smb so often,that it’s nearly like saying Hi to someone.

P.S.I looked at the book in which are all meanings of names e.g. Milan,Milana-slovanic name from the adjective milý,kind
Miloslav,Miloslava,Milena,
Milo,Milka-from the word kind,famous for its goodness, kindness.

By: Michaela Lukacikova

Michaela Lukacikova — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 13:07:45 +0000

Hi,
vau, really great words whit the same listeme MILU. Do you see that all this words have only possitive meaning? They sound so nice, lovely, positive, peaceful … And I like Mila (biscuit) too. Last week I was not sure about listeme, but after reading some chapters, I must tell that I really undertand it, and I am happy. Have a nice day.
Michaela

By: Alexandra Csingerová

Alexandra Csingerová — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:50:59 +0000

Maybe we could ask a Slovak linguist about how to analyze the expression „Milujem ta”. : ) I’m a bit confused because I would analyze it a bit differently as you did it and nobody came up with the same idea as mine.
I think the word „milujem” consists of THREE listemes! First of all, the base (or bound listeme) is mil- .
Then, -(u)j is a verb-forming suffix,
–e is only a kind of linking vowel
and only –m is what expresses the first person singular.

My analysis is based on the assumption that if we take different verbs such as vidím, robím, čakám, ponáhľam sa etc. the only suffix that is common in all of these verbs is the single –m, however all aspects (first person, singular, present tense) are the same.

And if we take the verbs which are structurally similar to „milujem” e.g. maľujem, obedujem etc. we can also see that the base of the verbs can be separated similarly: mal-, obed- and the remaining listemes also behave similarly: -(u)j is the verb-forming suffix and -(e)m is the suffix expressing the person.

Perhaps this is not essential from the point of view of lexical semantics and we should concentrate more on the meaning of the verb and the two arguments (the experiencer and the theme) but I felt I have to add my analysis.

By: Tatiana Leštinská

Tatiana Leštinská — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:20:04 +0000

Mark, it’s interesting how you see the expression ‘milujem ta’. Some of my collegues wrote that they use the word ‘milujem’ with other words like: milujem prechadzky, milujem telku and so on. When I thought about it I can say that in these examples I rather use the word ‘zboznujem’ (to adore). However, if I said it in English I would use ‘love’ or ‘like’ not ‘adore’. I don’t know why but may be it is because I associate the slovac word ‘milujem’ wirh love.

By: eva fodorova

eva fodorova — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:01:52 +0000

I’m writing you a comment for the first time, so I’m quite confused about it, and I hope you will get it. But I liked the topic if your lecture, and I would like to write my opinion to you. It is enthralling how many words are in the dictionary associated with the expression “I love you” or “milujem ta”. It was still more interesting for me to read them, because I am Hungarian,and there were some expressions among them, which I haven’t heard before. It was really interesting to read and find out their Hungarian meanings. So thank you for your work and “contribution”.

By: Richard Špurnaj

Richard Špurnaj — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:35:06 +0000

Hi!
I would like to respond to one of your paragraphs. You wrote: „So we have as possible candidates for the content listeme we associate with the meaning love: “mil-“, “milu-“, or “miluje.” ”. But what about the ‘miluj‘ ? It has also the association with the meaning love and even it is the meaningful unit which is able to stand on its own (so we don’t need to call it ‘bound listeme’). Here are also two meaningful units as in ‘miluje’ – the contentful notion involving love and the functional notion involving 2nd person singular subject imperative: ‘miluj’ means (You) love!
By the way, I think it is not allowed to take a photo of Polish customs officers…

By: Lenka Vadinova

Lenka Vadinova — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:12:47 +0000

Mark, thank you for using my list in our lecture. I hope I will be able to write something usable for the next time too.

Now just a short comment:
It’s a pity that we haven’t discussed the elements of the utterances which declare our strong feeling of attraction or love to somebody else.

I think that all the Indoeuropean languages are so similar in their structures that they all will use exactly three elements when declaring love or using any other verb. Some of these elements can be hidden in some languages, because its grammar rules allow it. As like in the Slovak language, it is equal to say “milujem ťa” or “ja ťa milujem”. Thanks to various endings in such languages, the utterances are understandable even if not used in their complete form with all the pronouns, articles etc. Languages able to do this are synthetical. I suppose that English is the most analytical language I came in contact with, having no possibility to omit the subject-marking pronoun. Then, when comparing I love you – ich liebe dich – ja te volim – ja ťebja ljublju – je t aime – (yo) te quiero – ja ťa milujem, I founnd the similarity of Indoeuropean languages obvious. Even the Hungarian “szeretlek” contains three elements, or not?

Maybe some of my colleagues have opposite opinion. Help me to find out. How is it with Italian declaration of love?

By: Katarína Poláčková

Katarína Poláčková — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:21:21 +0000

Lenka´s comment about different words beginning with „mil“ I found very ineresting. I didn´t realize before that the meaning of these words is always something positive.
When I read this week about countable and uncountable nouns I tried to compare them with Slovak. I realized that most of the uncountable nouns are uncountable as well in our laguage (for example furniture, weather, happines, health,…). But for example word like information we use in Slovak usually in plural form: „Musím si o tom zistiť nejaké informácie.“ – „I have to find some information about it.“
In mail you sent us you wrote „priam Vam“. Of course, you derivated it from the infinitive „priať“, like for example infinitive in „čítať, hovoriť, plávať,“…. . In this case, the first person Sg is „čítam, hovorím, plávam“, but in verbs like „siať“ – sow or „vziať“ – take, the first person Sg is not „siam, vziam“, but „sejem, vezmem“, so that is why not „priam“, but „prajem“.

By: Andrea Zelencova

Andrea Zelencova — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:26:03 +0000

This weeks reading was very good. When I read the part of this chapter about argument structures I was thinking about our structure “milujem ťa”. I think that we can call it Experiencer – theme verb. We have subject – the argument doing the feeling – I – experiencer and also the argument – ťa – that is the target of the feelings – theme. I like the term used by psycholinguists call the Universal Packager and I relised how did I learn English – countable and uncountable nouns at primary school. Our teacher gave au advice to packaged up into some kind od countable unit (e.g. milk – 2 bottles of milk) And after that we were able to sort out which of the nouns are C or UC.

I’m looking for the next class and can you explain to us thet cartoon, please