Breakdown of Даже короткий интервал может разрушить план.
план
plan
мочь
to be able to
короткий
short
даже
even
разрушить
to destroy
интервал
interval
Questions & Answers about Даже короткий интервал может разрушить план.
Why does план look like it is in the Nominative case if it is the object being ruined?
It is actually in the Accusative case! Because план is a masculine inanimate noun, its Accusative form is identical to its Nominative form. If it were a feminine noun like идея (idea), you would clearly see the change to the Accusative идею.
Why do we use the perfective verb разрушить after может instead of the imperfective разрушать?
The choice of aspect after может depends on the meaning. Here, we use the perfective разрушить because the sentence describes the completion and final result of an action (the plan gets completely ruined once), rather than an ongoing or repeated process.
Can короткий be used for both physical length and time?
Yes! Just like the word short in English, короткий can describe physical length as well as a brief duration of time, as seen here with короткий интервал.
Since we are learning about exact clock times, does интервал use any special time grammar?
No, интервал just means a general gap or pause. It does not trigger the special clock-reading grammar involving the Genitive case that you are learning in this lesson. Here, короткий интервал simply acts as the subject of the sentence in the Nominative case.
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