"Hol látsz te művésznőket?"
Translation:Where do you see artists?
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Is there any need for the "te" in this sentence? Doesn't the "sz" on the end of lát (látsz) tell us all we need to know?
You are right, and it is quite a suspicious kind of emphasis. 'Hol látsz művésznőket?' sounds pretty neutral without telling much about what the inquirer thinks of these artists or anything. The question 'Hol látsz te művésznőket?' with the added personal pronoun however smacks of disbelief and suspicion on the part of the inquirer about the existence of these alleged artists. The emphasis is on 'te', the person who is - at least according to the inquirer - interesting in this situation because they might be wrong.
Agreed, with the exception of the emphasis. I think it is clearly on "Hol". With a question with a question word, it is not easy to put the emphasis anywhere else but on the question word itself. The most emphasized position in a sentence is in front of the verb (if not the verb itself). And, since the question word must be closely followed by the verb, it is naturally the most emphasized word in the sentence. If we still want to emphasize the pronoun "te", it is best to move it forward, to the front of the sentence:
"Te hol látsz művésznőket?"
Still, it is just the second most emphasized word, after "hol".
And the sense of incredulity is mostly gone.
I don't know how it works but it does. When we put "te" behind the verb (to the least emphasized position in my opinion), the question takes on an air of disbelief. We can even take it one step forward, with an added "itt" - here:
"Hol látsz te (itt) művésznőket?"
As if saying "Where (on earth) do you see female artists here?? I do not see any!"
It has been really interesting to read your pondering about this. And I mostly agree with what you have had to say. Still, this positioning of 'te' after the verb has a kind of special attention or prominence given to it. Stress? Of course it does not fall on 'te'. But the facts that (1) the personal pronoun is not omitted and (2) it was put after the verb give 'te' some special significance. Does any such concept like syntactical emphasis without stress exists in linguistics?
That is a good question, I was wondering that myself. It seems that just by being there "unnecessarily" it gets some special weight. I am sure there is some scientific term for that. Maybe a linguist can add his/her $0.02.
Since previously "Művésznőket keresek a ház mögött,"
I understood "Hol látsz te művésznőket?" as a continuation,
which employs emphatically the otherwise unnecessary 'te'.
483
The 'any' is coming from an attempt to make the English idiomatic; it is not in the original Hungarian. Consider the following dialog: A: Look at the artists! B: I don't see (any) artists." B will usually say 'any' here, even though his sentence would also be grammatical without it.
I'm wondering the same thing. The footer says: "Where do you see any artists?", with any underlined when you leave out any during translating. However, at the top of this discussion page it says "Where do you see artists?" is the translation.
- 483
You are correct that the Hungarian here refers to women or female artists. However, I see no reason why you have to include that fact in the English translation, unless there is some special need to do so. But of course with these exercise sentences, we have no context.
--------- it's that female is a correct response but women is not . . .
- 483
In English, if you need to be specific, you can say either 'female artists' or 'women artists'. In other words, 'women' can be used as an adjective. It sounds a little awkard, but on the other hand, 'female' sounds a bit technical and bureaucratic.
---------- it's that duolingo finds that woman is ok but female is not . . .
I wrote "the artists" and the correction said "ANY artists." How would we know if it is: the or any or nothing at all?
- 483
We know that 'the artists' is wrong because the Hungarian does not have the definite article (a/az). It must be just 'artists' or 'any artists'.*
Either of the latter would be grammatical English, but idiomatic English often inserts the word 'any':
- I don't see artists.
- I don't see any artists.
- I don't see artists, just beggars.
- I don't see any artists, just some beggars.
Most English speakers would say 2 rather than 1. Some might say 3 rather than 4, however. The word 'any' is a sort of intensifier. But in 3, the word 'just' already is making a contrast, so the 'any' is less necessary.
- {edit} or perhaps "some" artists
Your examples are correct, but they are declarative sentences. I don't thing "Where do you see any artists?" is a natural question in idiomatic English.
- 483
Yes, you raise an interesting point. In English (unlike Hungarian and some other languages), there is a difference between the use of "any" and the use of "some". So we have the following choices :
1. Where do you see artists?
2. Where do you see any artists?
3. Where do you see some artists?
"Where do you see the artists" would not be right, for the reasons already stated.
I suppose most native English speakers would use 1 most of the time. But I bet some native speakers at least some of the time would say 2 or even 3.
In any case, note that the simpler question "Do you see any artists?" (without the "where") is 100% idiomatic.
I think the difference between the two is that the simpler question tries to establish whether or not there are artists at all, whereas the other question assume that there are some and then goes on to ask further about them .