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It is not related with the notion of ownership. Genitive form is used with "нет", because "нет" requires Genitive (in this situation): нет чего? -- нет машины.

"Нет" could also be used in other constructions, for example: "Нет войне!" (with Dative; this can be expanded as "[скажем] 'нет' войне!" -- "[we say] 'no' to war!")

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bellezzarubata.livejournal.com

So genitive is purely for negative ownership? Maybe that's a bit further than my current needs but otherwise, thanks, your explanation makes sense.

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To complicate things further, I could say that Genitive is also used to indicate "positive" ownership, in case where some quantity of something uncountable is concerned. For example: "У меня есть ещё немного воды" ("I have also some water left") or: "Два килограмма сахару, пожалуйста" ("Two kilos of sugar, please").

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In your example with немного, немного is in Nominative and the Genitive is for that something of which you got немного. The entire object (немного воды) is in Nominative (just drop воды to see it or replace the whole thing with something different), but it's compound and some of its parts can be in a different case. This is a perfectly normal situation just like колесо (Nominative) машины (Genitive): something being a part of something, or belonging to something or someone. It's just perhaps slightly different semantically.
But there's a big difference between
у меня есть колесо (от) машины
and
у меня нет колеса (от) машины
because there're different cases.

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Yes, you're right. I was talking, however, about different uses of Genitive: not only in conjunction with "нет", but also to indicate part of something. I was just trying to illustrate that Genitive is not only used with "negative posession", as it was asked in the first place.

And, by the way, direct object (in syntactical meaning) is never Nominative, it is Accusative. It just happens that some nouns have identical forms for Nominative and Accusative.

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Yeah, sorry, must've been accusative, of course. It's hard to remember rules useless for a native speaker and easy to forget the details I don't even have to think of :)

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That's why it's important to study foreign languages. German, by the way, helps a lot in terms of paying attention to cases :)

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As we both noted, our Russian cases intersect and sometimes one needs to think or concentrate to determine the case correctly. :)

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Я купил сахара/сахару (with Genetive/Dative) seems to be more colloquial than Я купил сахар (with Nominative).

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icamel.livejournal.com

You say я купил сахара/сахару when you want to indicate that you bought some amount of sugar. If you say that you bought enough or usual amount you say Я купил сахар.

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I don't know... While I don't disagree with this (and my Russian grammar book says the same), I can hardly remember using this form of the noun in this specific sense of telling the amount... I'd normally say:
Я купил сахар
Я не купил сахар(а) <- negation like in У меня нет сахара.
But, hold on... I'd say this:
Я съел суп.
Я поел супа. Perhaps, the short duration of the action (поел = ел for a (short) while) makes me say so. Jeez, if I were to learn Russian as a foreign language, I'd probably be hopeless as there so many subtleties. :)

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Personally I've come to a conclusion that it's improper to call treat those as rules because they are often only approximations and there're numerous exceptions, which is why it's hard to make a strict definition. Instead I prefer to think of those "rules" as of patterns and claim that bad teachers don't have problems with rules (although they fail to explain them well, which is often objectively impossible because of the very nature of the matter), but they have problems with patterns: they don't know them well, can't list most of them and describe what exactly happens in each and every case without resorting to broken or plain made-up rules.

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spiritrc.livejournal.com

I think it's still about the amount.
Я съел суп = I ate the soup (all of it that was in the plate, in the pan or in any other container)
Я поел супа = I ate some soup (you have some more left in either the plate or the pan)

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"Сахар" in "я купил сахар" is in Accusative, not Nominative. "Сахар" has identical forms for Accusative and Nominative, but direct object is never in Nominative, only Accusative.

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Well, I can't be surprised that it works differently with сахару and воды. As I was recently reading about our case system, I stumbled upon a few facts that I never truly realized. Our cases depend heavily on the gender, count and animateness and the declinations are partially shared between several cases.
Back to the case, though...
My book lists a number of masculine nouns exhibiting this kind of declination:
чай -> чаю
сахар -> сахару
суп -> супу
сыр -> сыру
лук -> луку
рис -> рису
снег -> снегу
песок -> песку
бензин -> бензину
народ -> народу
(not sure why it only lists the form ending with у and not with а)
and I remember people sometimes say молоку (молоко is neuter gender)

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icamel.livejournal.com

It is not the matter of ownership, it is the matter of existence.

e.g. бога нет.

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By the way, English phrase "I have a car" contains "car" as a direct object, where Russian translation "у меня есть машина" doesn't have direct object ("машина" is an object semantically, but is a subject grammatically), and the same thing is true with negative phrase ("у меня нет машины", "машины" is not an object) so your question is not strictly correct.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but this is how I understand Russian syntax. :)

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The question is some five miles off, because how on Earth can a noun be "infinitive"?

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>I have a car (car is in infinitive).

Yes, if you mean that it's in nominative (car is a noun, not a verb) it works this way. In English.
In Russian it does not work this way, because Russian is not a "to have" language, it is a "to be" language. If you try to translate the correct Russian sentence, у меня есть машина, word-by-word, you'll get "by me, there is a car." Only, you cannot translate word-by-word and get a nice Russian sentence: it just doesn't work. You have to understand the "grammar logic" of the language first, and the grammar logic of Russian is dramatically different than that in English. Just FYI, if you translate your sentence from English to Russian wrd-by-word, you'll get an awkward "я имею машину" which, for many native Russian speakers, will mean "I have a sexual intercourse with a car."

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eavanmoore.livejournal.com

Just FYI, if you translate your sentence from English to Russian wrd-by-word, you'll get an awkward "я имею машину" which, for many native Russian speakers, will mean "I have a sexual intercourse with a car."
LOL. Thanks for the warning there. Having never been taught that verb, I was delighted to find out it existed; it made explaining English posessive constructions to Russian speakers so much easier.

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jawlenska.livejournal.com

<< for many native Russian speakers, will mean "I have a sexual intercourse with a car." <<

Hahahaha OMG. This is so awkward. ://

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rower.livejournal.com

err, am i wrong or there is no such construction in english as "to have someone" with pretty close meaning ?

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cassandraclue.livejournal.com

you can say it in english, but it's out-of-date. It would have the connotation of rape or something close to it, IMO.

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jim-24601.livejournal.com

Yes, if you mean that it's in nominative (car is a noun, not a verb) it works this way. In English.

Well, strictly speaking it should be in the accusative in English, only English lost its accusative case for nouns centuries ago.

Incidentally, does nobody say автомобиль any more? None of my Russian text books date from this century ;)

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Автомобиль is a technical or a legal term (like "vehicle") and has a very limited use in colloquial speech. Of course, if you speak to a tax inspector, you say "в этом году я приобрёл автомобиль" (I have purchased a vehicle this year,) but to your buddies, colleagues, parents etc. you say "в этом году я купил машину" (I have bought a car this year.)

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Thing is, the situation in Russian is kind of reverse than that in English where "vehicle" is more official than "car" -- "автомобиль" is more official than "машина" which, being an informal, colloquial word, also applies to computers and any other kinds of devices in question; I have heard amateur radio operators calling their transmitters машина. Автомобиль is not exactly neutral, I'd say it's official/business/legal. Средство автотранспорта (or, more generally, транспортное средство) is hopelessly and strictly legalese while автомобиль can be legalese, but is also used in other styles. O mighty Stylistics of Russian Speech, o Professor Rosenthal.

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