Breakdown of По мере того как человек взрослеет, он накапливает мудрость.
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
человек
person
по мере того как
as
взрослеть
to mature
накапливать
to accumulate
мудрость
wisdom
Questions & Answers about По мере того как человек взрослеет, он накапливает мудрость.
How does the phrase по мере того как work, and what does it literally mean?
It translates to "as" or "in proportion as." Literally, it means something like "by the measure of that how." It is a compound conjunction used to show that two processes are happening simultaneously and changing in parallel. Because it starts the sentence here, the comma is placed between the two clauses.
Why are the verbs взрослеет and накапливает both in the imperfective aspect?
The conjunction по мере того как specifically highlights a gradual, ongoing progression happening at the same time as another. Because it focuses on a continuous process of change rather than a single completed action, you will almost always use the imperfective aspect for both verbs in these types of sentences.
Человек is a masculine noun. If the person we are talking about happens to be female, does the pronoun он change to она?
No, because the pronoun он must agree with the grammatical gender of the noun человек (which is masculine), rather than the biological gender of a specific person. Here it refers to a person in general, so the masculine grammatical agreement is strictly maintained.
What case is мудрость in, and why didn't its ending change to -у like many other feminine nouns in this case?
It is in the accusative case, acting as the direct object of накапливает (accumulates). Мудрость is a feminine noun that ends in a soft sign (often called a 3rd declension noun). For these specific nouns, the accusative form looks exactly the same as the nominative form, which is why it doesn't take the -у ending you see on words like книга (книгу).
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