Breakdown of После ужина гости разошлись по своим комнатам.
комната
room
гость
guest
свой
one's own
после
after
по
along, around
ужин
dinner, supper
разойтись
to disperse (on foot) [pf]
Questions & Answers about После ужина гости разошлись по своим комнатам.
How does the verb разошлись express "dispersed"?
This verb is built from the infinitive разойтись. It combines the prefix раз- (indicating moving apart or scattering in multiple directions) with the base verb of motion for walking, идти. The reflexive ending -ся (which becomes -сь after a vowel) makes it intransitive, showing that the subjects themselves are separating. Literally, they "walked apart."
Why does разошлись look so different from its infinitive разойтись?
Like all prefixed verbs based on идти, the past tense relies on the irregular stem -шёл / -шл-. Because "guests" is plural, we use -шли, followed by the reflexive ending -сь. The extra -о- in the middle (раз-о-шлись) is an inserted vowel that makes the word easier to pronounce by breaking up the awkward consonant cluster "зшл".
Why use по своим комнатам (Dative) instead of just в свои комнаты (Accusative)?
The preposition по followed by the Dative case is used here for its distributive meaning. It emphasizes that the guests didn't all pile into one single room together, but rather each person went to their respective room. This distributive sense pairs perfectly with the scattering prefix раз-.
Could I use их instead of своим here?
No, you must use своим. Because их (their) does not reflect back to the subject of the sentence, saying по их комнатам would imply the guests went to rooms belonging to a different group of people. The reflexive possessive pronoun свой is required here to show that the guests went to their own rooms.
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