Начало ЕМУ положила.....

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

"Статья министра Лаврова – это продолжение диалога между Россией и США, между Россией и Западом по поводу двусторонних и многосторонних отношений, а также проблем мироустройства. Начало ЕМУ положила сильная, аналитическая и весьма критическая речь президента России Владимира Путина в Мюнхене."

Dear Community,

In the above text, I have difficulty properly deciphering the noun from which "ему" is derived. If "ему" means "to him/it" then who or what is "he/it"? Is it "диалог", "Лавров"? It does not make sense to me that "ему" could be "Путин". It can not be "статья", because then it would have to be "ей".

I'm inclined to think that this could be a typo and instead of "ему" we should have "его". To me this would make sense in the context of "the beginning OF THIS dialogue was initiated by the strong,......of Putin in Munich".

Is it "Начало его" or "Начало ему"? - Or is it the case that in contrast to English where we say "The beginning of this", Russian phrases this as what to an English speaker looks like "The beginning to this"? Is "Начало ему" in this context therefore a fixed phase meaning "Its beginning", "The beginning of this"?

Thank you in advance for your input.

Best regards,

ФБ

EDIT: Thank you very much to all who contributed to solving this riddle. "The beginning was made by...."

Comments

[apredeus.livejournal.com]

>Is it "диалог", "Лавров".

диалог

Начало (диалогу) положила...

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

So it's "Начало к + чему" (dative) and not "Начало чего" (genitive)?

(I think I remember reading that rule some time ago, but for want of practice I seem to have totally forgot it existed.)

[apredeus.livejournal.com]

urgh. as a native speaker, I'm not good with the rules at all :)

but I can tell that there is an expression "положить начало (чему-либо)" (as well as "положить конец (чему-либо)"

so yes, it is dative, but without "к"

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Okay. So it "положить" that governs the dative in this case?

Can you give another example with "положить чему-либо"?

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Okay. So it IS "положить" that governs the dative in this case?

[oryx_and_crake]

положить начало (конец) (чему-либо) requires dative

standalone конец/начало (чего-либо), as a rule, requires genitive. E.g. начало книги, конец главы. However I can think of phrases where конец has another noun in dative. E.g. Конец войне. (The war is over.) Мне конец! (I am finished!)
I don't think I can formulate a rule here. However, I think one can safely say that for "linear" things (like a rope or a book or a period of time) начало, конец will require genitive:
начало года
концы веревки
начало главы
конец месяца

and for people, events and processes it may be dative (see above for examples). However this is something that occurred to me just this moment, and there may be no rule as such about that.

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've got it now. In the case above, "положить" is definitey the reason for the dative (in combination with beginning or end of/to something).

German has a similar construction:

Dem Treiben ein Ende machen - To put an end to the nonsense.

Interestingly, in German, this type of construction is generally restricted to "конец" - Ende. But there is no rule saying it can not be used at the "beginning" as well, as is the case in Russian:

Dem muss ein Anfang gemacht werden. - A beginning must be made.

So, basically, "Начало ЕМУ положила....." means "The beginning was made by...."

[freiburg234.livejournal.com]

For the sake of accuracy, "Dem muss ein Anfang gemacht werden" would not be considered standard German as the pronoun "dem" is missing a noun to which it refers. Hence, in this case, we'd probably say "Mit dem muss ein Anfang gemacht werden".