hon-yaku-chou, XX (suru) -> X-tuku
Tomoyuki Tanaka
Koji Hishinuma <koj...@tkh.att.ne.jp> wrote:
>
>I can think of many such cases. One of them is
>a Japanese phrase in which the subject is a non-
>human being.
>
>For example, I see and hear phrases like "A(non-human)
>ga B(human) o .....ni shita." very often, but it sounds very
>unnatural to me. I am sure this comes from the form in
>English, "A made B so and so."
>
>So even though I hear people say, "Nani ga kare o so
>saseta noka." I usually say, "Naze kare wa so shita noka."
that's a good point.
many pages have been written about this topic (hon-yaku-chou
or choku-yaku-chou), usually by translators (Eng->Jp).
my favorite example is overuse of KARE and KANOJO.
translator Yanase Naoki's recent book has a whole chapter on
this topic. he boasts of having translated a whole chapter
of Joyce's Ulysses without using a single KARE or KANOJO.
going the other way (Jp->Eng), i've noticed that Japanese
people in their English prose often overuse the word
"nowadays", even in formal writing such as scientific papers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
XX (suru) -> X-tuku as in betobeto (suru) -> beto-tuku
--------------------------------------------------------------------
dabudabu (suru) -> dabu-tuku
"double" [English] -> daburu
pakupaku (suru) -> paku-tuku
"packen" [German] -?-> pakuru
dabu-tuku and daburu don't share a meaning.
but
paku-tuku and pakuru do share a meaning (to eat).
(pakuru also means steal/shoplift,
plagiarize/parody, and arrest)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
why don't we have certain X-tuku forms?
is there a clear rule?
mukamuka (suru) -> muka-tuku
gatagata (suru) -> gata-tuku
ichaicha (suru) -> icha-tuku
hirahira (suru) -> hira-tuku (NON-WORD)
mokumoku (suru) -> moku-tuku (NON-WORD)
sarasara (suru) -> sara-tuku (NON-WORD)
my tentative rule is ...
X-tuku is formed only when there is
sticking (two things coming into contact),
or
congestion (or some other undesirable situation
involving metaphorical congestion).
--
;;; TANAKA Tomoyuki ("Mr. Tanaka" or "Tomoyuki")
Tomoyuki Tanaka
Hirofumi Nagamura <naga...@kh.rim.or.jp> wrote:
>
>This may sound like nitpicking (I hate nitpicking!), but that should
>be "paku-tuku and pakuru _used to_ share a meaning (to eat)". "Pakuru"
>has lost that meaning.
dictionaries say that pakuru (still) means "to eat".
interesting that you say that.
to me the "eat" meaning of pakuru seems too new, not too old.
>> my tentative rule is ...
>> X-tuku is formed only when there is
>> sticking (two things coming into contact),
>> or
>> congestion (or some other undesirable situation
>> involving metaphorical congestion).
>
>How does that explain "gatatsuku"?
>
i think gatatuku involves "two things coming into
contact" in an undesirable way.
i have a new rule:
1. it's always possible to get a X-tuku from XX (suru).
2. but some of them seem more "right" than others.
for some reason
( probably because
tuku is "to stick" and
tuku is saying bad things
akutai wo tuku
uso wo tuku, but not "honto wo tuku" )
X-tuku seems more right when it's bad.
examples:
moisture in hair:
too much moisture: beto-tuku
right moisture: sara-tuku (UNCOMMON)
too little moisture: pasa-tuku
smiling:
right smile: niko-tuku (UNCOMMON)
too much smile: niya-tuku
the biggest problem (exception/counterexample) to this rule
i've found so far is:
why i've never heard of tiku-tuku?
or zuki-tuku?
Hirofumi Nagamura
>
> dabudabu (suru) -> dabu-tuku
> "double" [English] -> daburu
"Dabudabu(suru)/dabutsuku" and "daburu" have completely different
etymological roots. Koojien has an example of "dabudabu" used in
Ukiyoburo (an early 19th c. novel), and its earlier form "tabutabu" is
attested from the late 14th c. (Taiheeki).
> pakupaku (suru) -> paku-tuku
> "packen" [German] -?-> pakuru
Koojien has an example of "pakuri" used in (again) Ukiyoburo. Your
"packen" story seems like a folk etymology. (It sounds to me like
something cooked up by high school students in the old days, like the
one about "dekansho" being a contraction of "Descartes, Kant, and
Schopenhauer".)
> dabu-tuku and daburu don't share a meaning.
Obviously, since they're unrelated.
> but
> paku-tuku and pakuru do share a meaning (to eat).
This may sound like nitpicking (I hate nitpicking!), but that should
be "paku-tuku and pakuru _used to_ share a meaning (to eat)". "Pakuru"
has lost that meaning.
> why don't we have certain X-tuku forms?
> is there a clear rule?
>
> mukamuka (suru) -> muka-tuku
> gatagata (suru) -> gata-tuku
> ichaicha (suru) -> icha-tuku
>
> hirahira (suru) -> hira-tuku (NON-WORD)
> mokumoku (suru) -> moku-tuku (NON-WORD)
> sarasara (suru) -> sara-tuku (NON-WORD)
>
> my tentative rule is ...
> X-tuku is formed only when there is
> sticking (two things coming into contact),
> or
> congestion (or some other undesirable situation
> involving metaphorical congestion).
How does that explain "gatatsuku"?
Cheers,
--
Hirofumi Nagamura
naga...@kh.rim.or.jp