Прививка помогает предотвращать многие заболевания.

to help

Breakdown of Прививка помогает предотвращать многие заболевания.

• многие: many
• прививка: the vaccination
• предотвращать: to prevent

Questions & Answers about Прививка помогает предотвращать многие заболевания.

What is the grammatical gender and case of прививка in this sentence, and why is it used that way?

Прививка is a feminine noun in the nominative singular. It’s the subject of the sentence (the thing that “helps”), so it must stand in the nominative case.

Why is the verb помогает used with an infinitive (предотвращать) rather than a finite form or a different construction?

After помогать, Russian typically uses an infinitive to express the action being helped. Here, помогает предотвращать literally means “helps to prevent.” There’s no need for a conjunction—just помогает + infinitive.

Why is предотвращать in the imperfective aspect, and could I use the perfective предотвратить instead?

The imperfective предотвращать emphasizes an ongoing or habitual ability to prevent diseases in general. You can indeed use the perfective: Прививка помогает предотвратить многие заболевания, which highlights the action as a complete event (“helps to bring about the prevention”). Both are correct, with a slight nuance: imperfective for continuous, perfective for single or whole outcomes.

What cases are многие and заболевания, and why these forms?