Shaun
Construction of the word подтвержда́ть I've heard that in Russian the words are generally constructed with a root and have specific prefixes or suffixes added to them (I think the proper linguistics term for this is derivational morphology)... I'm trying to work out the construction of "подтвержда́ть " (imperf). From wikipedia I see that the etymology of the word is as such: подтверди́ть +‎ -а́ть And the etymology of подтверди́ть is под- +‎ твёрдый +‎ -ить под- (takes adjectives, produces adverbs) and means: completely твёрдый means: hard or solid? ить: to So the meaning is like "to be completely solid/to be completely firm"? I'm interested to know how a native Russian speaker would break down this word into the seperate parts and explain it.
Jul 1, 2019 3:56 PM
Answers · 6
под - prefix тверд - firm ить - suffix подтвердить - Agree or Prove or Assure You can say: Этот камень тверд - This means that the stone is hard. Or you can say: я подтверждаю (под+тверж/д+даю) свое намерение учить язык - I confirm my intention to learn the language Or: этот человек твердо (уверенно) стоит на ногах - this man is firmly on his feet. there is a word: отвердеть (о+тверд+еть) - it means - to become solid
July 1, 2019
под - It's mean under, below and nothing else. твёрдый - You are right, hard and solid. ить - Makes verb from adjective. For example: твёрдый (adjective) - твердить (verb, means to repeat), мягкий (soft) - смягчить (to make softer), мокрый (wet) - мочить (wet like verb). подтвердить - confirm, to declare about your position / decision firmly.
July 3, 2019
It is a calque form Latin or Greek. It is "confirm". literally it is "underfirm". Also: "твердить" - "to keep insisting on..", "to keep repeating" "утверждать" - to state, "утверждение" - an assertion. another meaning of "утверждать" is just to make somethign firm, to put something firmly on the ground.
July 1, 2019
Morphology and etymology are not the same thing exactly. The imperfective verb "подтверждать" derives from the perfective verb "подтвердить" (the process is called "imperfectivation") by means of changing the suffix -и- to -а-. In its turn, the perfective "подтвердить" derives from the imperfective "твердить" by means of adding the prefix под- (this on the contrary is called "perfectivation"). So you have: подтверждать < подтвердить < под+твердить The verb твердить means 'to (constantly) repeat the same thing". The prefix под- has multiple meanings and can form verbs, noun, adjectives and adverbs. In this case, it means an action of copying/following someone's action ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4-) Thus, the pair подтверждать/подтвердить means to confirm/affirm/reaffirm, i.e. to assert something that has already been established, said etc
July 1, 2019
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July 1, 2019
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