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I'm not sure if I need a comma in the following phrases:

Не знаю что сказать.
Не знаю что вам сказать.

To me they seem to be similar to the phrases "Тут есть над чем подумать" "Тут есть что посмотреть" but the ruscorpora.ru search shows that many authors use commas.

Sergey Slepov
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farfareast
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1 Answers1

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"Не знаю, что вам сказать" is a case where the infinitive occupies the position of an object (a position usually taken by a noun phrase). In this case, you always should surround the sentence with commas, unless there are already other punctuation marks at its boundaries.

"Eсть над чем подумать" is an exception to this rule. It can be found here in paragraph 6, alongside with other exceptions.

I think that these sentences are declared to be exceptions because linguists still argue about their internal structure and cannot say if the embedded sentence "над чем подумать" occupies a position of a complement or if "подумать" and "есть" constitute one verbal group.

Olga
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  • I agree that что вам сказать occupies the position of an object, but why do you call it "sentence". In many cases infinitive with dependent words is not a "sentence". Maybe, if we can define differences between these two types of infinitives we can resolve this problem. (Just a thought). – farfareast Jan 05 '13 at 22:39
  • Very interesting link to Rosenthal you sent. I think you meant for this case the item 6 of §114. Interesting is that it says не нахожу что сказать does not require comma - a very short distance to our не знаю что сказать. :-) – farfareast Jan 05 '13 at 22:43
  • Examples of infinitives which are not sentences here in "Инфинитив в роли второстепенных членов предложения" sub-chapter. – farfareast Jan 05 '13 at 22:51
  • OK, good points, I'm correcting my answer. – Olga Jan 06 '13 at 00:17
  • As for the infinitive not being a sentence, I wanted to say "clause", but realized that it was a linguistic term. Also, it is not clear how independent infinitives are (я умею вышивать vs. я купила нитки, чтобы вышивать). But it is not strictly related to the question and should better be discussed at linguistics.stackexchange.com – Olga Jan 06 '13 at 00:28
  • Depending on the point of view, "что вам сказать" can be treated as an infinitivw phrase or as a clause, an impersonal clause. – Yellow Sky Jan 06 '13 at 09:26
  • Olga, your answer has internal logic: If a group of infinitive answers to questions что, чему, о чём и т.п. instead of что делать (a relative pronoun must be used for transformation), it must be surrounded by commas. To this rule the big list of exceptions is attached. It can be found in Rosenthal to which you give the link. I'm marking it as the answer. Accepting this as true we should modify/comment the answer to "Тут есть над чем подумать" stating that this is one of many exceptions of general rule. – farfareast Jan 06 '13 at 20:27