Re: long, complex sentences [OT]
Mark Spahn
> A propros nothing, I've been wondering where questions like "how to
> you parse this long sentence" have gone.
> Speaking of long sentence whose parsing is not immediately obvious, get a
> load of this passage describing the Battle of Agincourt in 1415:
>
> The [French cavalry] charge, momentarily terrifying for the English,
> from many of whom French men-at-arms,
> twice their height from the ground, and moving at ten or
> fifteen miles an hour on steel-shod and grotesquely
> caparisoned war-horses, had stopped only a few feet
> distant, had been a disaster for the enemy.
> And as they[1] rode off, the archers, with all the violent
> anger that comes with release from sudden danger,
> bent their[2] bows and sent fresh flights of arrows after
> them[3] bringing down more horses and maddening others
> into uncontrolled flight.
>
> Source: John Keegan, "The Face of Battle", page 97
>
> The first sentence here I had to read several times to
> understand what noun goes with what verb. The basic
> structure of this sentence is "The charge ... had been
> a disaster", but the "..." part -- which might, to be more
> reader-friendly, have been set off by dashes, like this --
> is a long clause whose own structure takes some time
> to digest; we don't know what the _from_ phrase refers
> to until we get to the end-of-cause verb "had stopped".
> By the time the reader gets to the end-of-sentence
> "had been a disaster", he will have forgotten just what
> is supposed to have been a disaster.
>
> The second sentence is much easier to read because
> it contains no clauses that interrupt the narration
> of a thought. But it has pronoun problems. It takes
> a fraction of a second to realize that [1] does not
> refer to the archers, but rather to the French men-at-arms
> or to their war-horses (but which?). The "they" of [2]
> refers to the archers, while the "they" of [3] refers
> to either the French or their horses.
On this theme of parsing long sentences, here are two longish
sentences, one of which is much easier to parse than the other.
These examples are taken from 本多勝一「日本語の作文技術」.
(A)
The hunters shot the ducks that were swimming against
the current which was carrying the poor birds out to sea.
(B)
The National Guardsmen the governor the people the students
had tried to talk to had elected ordered to the campus
milled about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
Sentence (B) is very hard to understand on first reading,
even though it is perfectly grammatical. It becomes
a little easier to follow if its
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll
grammatical structure is shown by punctuation:
The National Guardsmen (the governor [the people {the students
had tried to talk to} had elected] ordered to the campus)
milled about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
The Japanese version of sentence (B) will probably be much easier
to follow than the English version of this "periodic sentence".
Quote:
つまり（A)の方は入れ子ではなくて修飾・被修飾（または主述）が
直結しているが、（B)の方はnested construction (繰り込み構文）
となっているために、紙に書いて解剖でもしてみないと把えがたい
として、次ページのように[the above parentheses within parentheses]
分析する。
どうやら「わかりやすい文章」のための基本的原理は、全く異質の
言語間においても共通のようだ。
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
Warren Smith
(B)
The National Guardsmen the governor the people the students had tried to
talk to had elected ordered to the campus milled about in the quadrangle
clutching their canteens.
Sentence (B) is very hard to understand on first reading, even though it is
perfectly grammatical.
-----------
This is a very interesting sentence, to be sure..... but not quite
"perfectly grammatical": the term "the people the students had tried to talk
to" ends with a preposition. This should be "the people to whom the students
had tried to talk," which actually makes this bit of the sentence far easier
to parse. (This is the first time I have understood the utility of avoiding
ending a term with a preposition....).
Warren
Marc Adler
> This is a very interesting sentence, to be sure..... but not quite
None of this makes it a _well-written_ sentence, however... ;-)
--
Marc Adler
www.adlerpacific.com
nirebloga.wordpress.com
mudawwanatii.wordpress.com
blogsheli.wordpress.com
Minoru
The Asahi Shimbun for many years, so that his interest in writing
sentences easier to understood may be lopsided. His experience in
reading or writng academic books, legal papers, etc. may be limited
and we must keep that in mind in following his teachings. I know
another person who preached similar techniques who used to be a NHK
broadcasting announcer. It is obvious that their professions require
simple sentences even at a sacrifice of cutting corners.
Minoru Mochizuki
On 7月6日, 午後7:39, "Mark Spahn" <marksp...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Michael Santone writes,
Tom Donahue
> None of this makes it a _well-written_ sentence, however... ;-)
So does he give any suggestions for improving it? Something
like this?
The students had tried to talk to the people; but, alas, the
people had elected the governor who ordered to the
campus the National Guardsmen who now milled
about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
I don't think I've ever used the word "alas" in print.
Looking at it, it kind of turns the sentence into a story,
where the central event is the election (a journalist would
like that), and the result is National Guardsmen
milling about in the quadrangle.
--
Tom Donahue
Steven P. Venti
> None of this makes it a _well-written_ sentence, however... ;-)
Actually, I would dispute the assertion that it's even grammatically
well formed. The fact that the words are organized in a logical manner
does not make it so, otherwise we could also say that an alphabetized
list of those same words would also be well formed. Nesting might be
grammatical in some other language, especially programming languages,
but not in English.
BTW, I believe that the litmus test of whether something is
grammatically well formed or not should be that 68% of all native
speakers should be able to parse the sentence _instantaneously_, even
without understanding it fully.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Steven P. Venti
Mail: spv...@bhk-limited.com
Rockport Sunday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCPpd20CgXE
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Hechtenberg
> BTW, I believe that the litmus test of whether something is
> grammatically well formed or not should be that 68% of all native
> speakers should be able to parse the sentence _instantaneously_, even
> without understanding it fully.
>
Considering that the Department of Education, 2003 National Assessment
of Adult Literacy grades 14 % of adults in the US as below basic, 29 %
as Basic, 44 % as intermediate, and 13 % as proficient, the chances do
not seem to be good.
Below basic: Able to perform no more than the most simple literacy
activities.
Basic: Simple activities such as understanding a pamphlet for
prospective jurors.
Intermediate: Moderately difficult activities such as finding
information in reference materials.
Proficient: Complex activities such as comparing viewpoints in two
different editorials.
Have fun (and no long, complex sentences),
Roland
Mark Spahn
I claim sentence (B) _is_ perfectly grammatical, which means that
it can be parsed; that is, the grammatical role of every word can
be identified, with nothing left over. The reason it is hard to understand
is that -- to borrow computer terminology -- it is near the stack limit
of the human mind. In trying to understand
"Noun A noun B noun C noun D verb D verb C verb B verb A",
(where A = the National Guardsmen, B = the governor,
C = the people, D = the students), it is easy and natural to
associate verb D with noun D (actually, verb-phrase D and noun-phrase D),
but then the listener hears verb C and has to remember to "pop the
stack" of deferred concepts to retrieve noun C that goes with it,
and likewise it is a feat of memory to associated verb B with noun B
and verb A with noun A.
This sentence (B) is a monstrosity that some grammatical Dr. Frankenstein
must have created to illustrate a point about deferral of understanding.
To be more understandable to a listener, sentence (B) need to be
rewritten as a more linear (and possible multi-sentence) narration, like
"Noun D verb D, noun C verb C, noun B verb B, and noun A verb A."
And there has never been a grammatical rule that a sentence may
not end with a preposition. That's a canard up with which I won't put.
More at
http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ling009.html
Marc Adler
> So does he give any suggestions for improving it? Something
> like this?
Good point. Instead of just throwing popcorn from the back row, maybe
I should give it a shot myself.
Original:
The National Guardsmen the governor the people the students
had tried to talk to had elected ordered to the campus
milled about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
One solution is to use passive constructions, because then the verb
comes next to the subject:
The National Guardsmen, ordered to the campus by the governor who had
been elected by the people the students had tried to talk to, milled
about the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
It's still kind of vague. How about this?
The National Guardsmen milled about the quadrangle clutching their
canteens, having been ordered to the campus by the governor elected by
the people the students had tried to talk to.
It's still not a very good sentence, because there's too much
information squeezed onto the plate.
The National Guardsmen milled about the quadrangle clutching their
canteens. They had been ordered to the campus earlier that day by the
governor who had -- ironically enough -- been elected by the very
people the students had tried to talk to.
Something like that might work in a pinch. It needs more fleshing out, though.
Marc Adler
> list of those same words would also be well formed. Nesting might be
> grammatical in some other language, especially programming languages,
> but not in English.
You have a point, but I think the definition of "grammatical" that
you're using isn't the usual one (e.g., the one Mark Spahn is using).
I totally agree with the sentiment that there's more to good writing
than grammar, however.
> BTW, I believe that the litmus test of whether something is
> grammatically well formed or not should be that 68% of all native
> speakers should be able to parse the sentence _instantaneously_, even
> without understanding it fully.
Not 67.5%? ;-)
Steven P. Venti
> . . . the chances do not seem to be good.
The chances of _what_ do not seem good? If you meant, of the OP's
example sentence being judged grammatically well formed, well, no big
surprise. On the other hand, if you meant that my proposed litmus test
is unlikely to have any utility, well, no big deal there, either,
because it was intended only demonstrate that, lacking a definition of
what is meant by "grammatical," the assertion that something is or isn't
grammatical is moot.
All of which just goes to show that short, simple sentences can be just
as unintelligible as long, complex ones.
Mark Spahn
Steven P. Venti writes,
> BTW, I believe that the litmus test of whether something is
> grammatically well formed or not should be that 68% of all native
> speakers should be able to parse the sentence _instantaneously_, even
> without understanding it fully.
Not 67.5%? ;-) -- Marc Adler
I too wondered where that "68%" came from.* Maybe from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68-95-99.7_rule
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
*Aaarrgh! Ending a sentence with a preposition!
Steven P. Venti
> You have a point, but I think the definition of "grammatical" that
> you're using isn't the usual one (e.g., the one Mark Spahn is using).
Out of curiosity, what definition is that?
> Not 67.5%? ;-)
It wasn't _that_ rigorous a proposal. <g>
Marc Adler
> Out of curiosity, what definition is that?
Something like: "perfectly grammatical, which means that
it can be parsed; that is, the grammatical role of every word can
be identified, with nothing left over."
--
Steven P. Venti
Marc Adler <marc....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Something like: "perfectly grammatical, which means that it can be
> parsed; that is, the grammatical role of every word can be identified,
> with nothing left over."
Oh, that. Nonce grammar has it's uses, true. Given that definition, I
suppose that you could make the argument that "Man feed girl fish" is
perfectly grammatical, too.
Marc Adler
> Oh, that. Nonce grammar has it's uses, true. Given that definition, I
> suppose that you could make the argument that "Man feed girl fish" is
> perfectly grammatical, too.
Really?
Steven P. Venti
> > Oh, that. Nonce grammar has it's uses, true. Given that definition, I
> > suppose that you could make the argument that "Man feed girl fish" is
> > perfectly grammatical, too.
>
> Really?
Yeah. Why not?. There is more than one way to parse it, but since
"grammatical role of every word can be identified" in this case is
tantamount to saying "grammatical roles can be assigned arbitrarily,"
what's the problem?
Certainly there is more than one way to parse the example given by Mark
Spahn.
The National Guardsmen
the governor
the people
the students
had tried to talk to
had elected
ordered to the campus
milled about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
The National Guardsmen had tried to talk to the governor [who] had
elected the people [who] ordered to the campus the students [who] milled
about in the quadrangle clutching their canteens.
It makes no more nor any less sense than any other parsing. Perfectly
grammatical, I say.
Mark Spahn
>> Something like: "perfectly grammatical, which means that it can be
>> parsed; that is, the grammatical role of every word can be identified,
>> with nothing left over."
>
> Oh, that. Nonce grammar has it's uses, true. Given that definition, I
> suppose that you could make the argument that "Man feed girl fish" is
> perfectly grammatical, too.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Steven P. Venti
Okay, I'll rise to the bait of parsing this four-word alleged sentence.
First let's note that this sentence lacks any "flavoring" words like "a"
and "the". In addition, there is no punctuation at all. Aha, so we
conclude that this is an old-fashioned telegram text, such as
MAN FEED GIRL FISH STOP.
It could not mean 男が女の子に魚を食べさせる。,
Otoko ga onna-no-ko ni sakana wo tabesaseru.
because that would violate subject-verb agreement;
it would have to be "Man feed_s_ <indirect object> <direct object>."
I see no alternative but to construe "Man" as addressing someone,
in the meaning of "Hey you!" Then "feed" would be the imperative
form of a verb, "girl" would be an indirect object, and "fish" would
be a direct object of the verb "to feed". So this would have to mean
男よ！女の子に魚を食べさせろ。.
Otoko yo! Onna-no-ko ni sakana wo tabesasero.
One other possibile interpretation for this message, sent by
telegram or Morse code, is that there is a missing preposition "to",
and that what is meant is "Man, feed girl to fish."
This would make perfect sense if spoken by a master villain
who has captured James Bond's girlfriend and tells his underling to
throw her into the tank of piranhas he keeps for this purpose:
男よ！女の子を魚に食わせろ。.
Otoko yo! Onna-no-ko wo sakana ni kuwasero.
-- Mark Spahn @ Parsing R Us
Mark Spahn
Well, the sentence is perfectly grammatical,
but this interpretation is askew, says I.
Why? Because it violates the conventions of word order.
Your interpretation can be diagramed as
Noun A noun B noun C noun D verb A verb B verb C verb D.
This is equivalent to a parenthesization structure like
< ( [ { > ) ] }.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute
Topic for a doctoral dissertation:
Could a useful human language (or even a computer language)
exist that has the word-order convention illustrated above?
-- Mark Spahn
Marc Adler
> Yeah. Why not?. There is more than one way to parse it, but since
> "grammatical role of every word can be identified" in this case is
> tantamount to saying "grammatical roles can be assigned arbitrarily,"
I don't see how those two are the same.
> what's the problem?
"Feed" should be "feeds," for one.
> It makes no more nor any less sense than any other parsing. Perfectly
> grammatical, I say.
I disagree. There is only one way to parse the sentence according to
English grammar.
Steven P. Venti
> Well, the sentence is perfectly grammatical, but this interpretation is askew, says I.
> Why? Because it violates the conventions of word order.
> Could a useful human language (or even a computer language)
> exist that has the word-order convention illustrated above?
I am fascinated that you think my parsing violates conventions of word
order but your own doesn't.
Regarding your "topic for a doctoral dissertation":
"My sister, her teenage son, his wallet, went to school, and was in the
principal's office, because had been stolen" seems at least if not more
intelligible to me than "My sister, her teenage son, his wallet had
been stolen, so was in the principal's office, went to school."
mt_scratch
(snip)
> The reason it is hard to understand
> is that -- to borrow computer terminology -- it is near the stack limit
> of the human mind. In trying to understand
> "Noun A noun B noun C noun D verb D verb C verb B verb A",
> (where A = the National Guardsmen, B = the governor,
> C = the people, D = the students), it is easy and natural to
> associate verb D with noun D (actually, verb-phrase D and noun-phrase D),
> but then the listener hears verb C and has to remember to "pop the
> stack" of deferred concepts to retrieve noun C that goes with it,
> and likewise it is a feat of memory to associated verb B with noun B
> and verb A with noun A.
>
『オリジナルの英文が分かりにくいのは、「スタック」が深すぎるから』
この、「スタック」、"push-pop"を使った説明は、プログラム作成の経験がある
私には大変
分かり易い説明でした。
参考になりました。
桜内 実
M. Sakurauchi
David J. Littleboy
>
> 『オリジナルの英文が分かりにくいのは、「スタック」が深すぎるから』
> この、「スタック」、"push-pop"を使った説明は、プログラム作成の経験がある
> 私には大変
> 分かり易い説明でした。
> 参考になりました。
These ideas have been bouncing around the linguistics world for 50 years or
so. As professional translators, we'd be better off reading some linguistics
first.
Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" is a good introduction to modern,
generative linguistics. If you haven't read it, you probably shouldn't be
using the word "grammar" in a post on honyaku...
Or if you prefer Japanese:
David J. Littleboy
dav...@longlinks.com
Tokyo, Japan
mt_scratch
(「文法」でさえあまり重視していない)、このスレッドを読んで、
試しに読んでみようかと考えているところです。
桜内 実
M. Sakurauchi
>
> >
>
Brian Chandler
> "Mark Spahn" <mark...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Well, the sentence is perfectly grammatical, but this interpretation is askew, says I.
> > Why? Because it violates the conventions of word order.
> [snip]
> > Could a useful human language (or even a computer language)
> > exist that has the word-order convention illustrated above?
>
> I am fascinated that you think my parsing violates conventions of word
> order but your own doesn't.
There are two (fairly different) meanings of "grammar": one is based
on a belief that English is or ought to be Latin, and regards
"parsing" as largely attributing parts of speech to lexical items; the
other is based on scientific linguistics, generative grammars, and all
that. Perhaps you haven't been exposed to this notion of grammar?
This particular phenomenon is called "centre-embedding", and of course
it's a good way of illustrating the structural difference between
grammars of different natural languages. If you take a simple sentence
in Japanese:
ジャックくんが買っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。
If you replace all the words appropriately, and generate the
corresponding sentence you get:
The cheese the rat the cat that Jack kept chased ate was mouldy.
This is of course grammatical, but beyond normal "performance" (qv)
levels -- the stack is too deep. But you can't point any particular
bit that is a problem:
The cheese was mouldy.
The cheese the rat ate was mouldy.
This is the cheese the rat ate.
This is the cheese the rat that the cat chased ate.
This is the rat the cat chased.
This is the rat the cat that Jack kept chased.
This is the cat that Jack kept.
The Latinate view of "grammar" is probably influenced by the fact that
Latin has rich case markings, and (at least in poetry) extreme freedom
of word order. So "parsing" really consists not of applying phrase
structure rules at all, but simply working out which words belong
together. As in a schoolboy memory of Ovid's Metamorphosis hexameter,
where on seeing her hubby (whose name I've forgotten) turned into a
tree, the subject of the previous clause is described:
Nuda manu feriens exclamat pectore coniunx
Bare - hands - beating - exclaimed - breasts - wife
Which apparently means, "Beating her bare breasts, the wife of []
exclaimed..." (and that's all I remember).
Brian Chandler
Doreen Simmons
>Nuda manu feriens exclamat pectore coniunx
>Bare - hands - beating - exclaimed - breasts - wife
>
>Which apparently means, "Beating her bare breasts, the wife of []
>exclaimed..." (and that's all I remember).
Yes, but that would have to be the rather unexpected plural 'pectora' --
'pectus' means breast in the sense of 'chest' and therefore normally
is used in the singular; but then it wouldn't scan.
You fellows ceetainly seem to have a lot of time on your hands!
Doreen off to beat a goat (in a Celtic session)
Doreen Simmons
jz8d...@asahi-net.or.jp
Steven P. Venti
> There are two (fairly different) meanings of "grammar":
My point exactly, although I plead guilty to not saying so directly.
If this were a list for discussing scientific linguistics, I certainly
would have held my peace. But that isn't what this list is for, and
ordinarily, when "grammar" is discussed here, it is generally in the
context of wanting to be able to convey meaning more, rather than less,
efficiently. As far as I was concerned, the unqualified assertion that
the sentence in question was "perfectly grammatical" begged
clarification.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Steven P. Venti, speaking entirely as an individual
Mark Spahn
From: "Brian Chandler" <imagin...@despammed.com>
> Steven P. Venti wrote:
>> "Mark Spahn" <mark...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> > Well, the sentence is perfectly grammatical, but this interpretation is
>> > askew, says I.
>> > Why? Because it violates the conventions of word order.
>> [snip]
>> > Could a useful human language (or even a computer language)
>> > exist that has the word-order convention illustrated above?
>>
>> I am fascinated that you think my parsing violates conventions of word
>> order but your own doesn't.
>
> Um, what David said.
>
> There are two (fairly different) meanings of "grammar": one is based
> on a belief that English is or ought to be Latin, and regards
> "parsing" as largely attributing parts of speech to lexical items; the
> other is based on scientific linguistics, generative grammars, and all
> that. Perhaps you haven't been exposed to this notion of grammar?
There's no third choice?
> This particular phenomenon is called "centre-embedding", and of course
> it's a good way of illustrating the structural difference between
> grammars of different natural languages. If you take a simple sentence
> in Japanese:
>
> ジャックくんが買っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。
>
>
> If you replace all the words appropriately, and generate the
> corresponding sentence you get:
>
> The cheese the rat the cat that Jack kept chased ate was mouldy.
>
> This is of course grammatical, but beyond normal "performance" (qv)
> levels -- the stack is too deep. But you can't point any particular
> bit that is a problem.
...
> Brian Chandler
Thank you, Brian, for coming up with this sample sentence
that illustrates -- much better than mine did -- how much
easier it is to understand the linear Japanese text than the
(((stack overflow)-causing) (multiply (nested) English) sentence).
And thanks also to David Littleboy for the tip about
Steven Pinker's book "The Language Instinct".
I have read several of Pinker's books, but this one I missed.
I picked up a copy this morning from the local library.
It's next on my gonna-read list, right after Philip Plait's
"Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...".
-- Mark Spahn, hoping a tinfoil hat protects against gamma-ray bursts
Mika Jarmusz
> that illustrates -- much better than mine did -- how much
> easier it is to understand the linear Japanese text than the
> (((stack overflow)-causing) (multiply (nested) English) sentence).
同感です。語順に関するわかりやすい例文をありがとうございます。
日本語例文の語順についてですが、
名詞句（「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫」「猫が追いかけた鼠」など）
の正しい順番は、これしかないのでは？
「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
さらにこの例文では格助詞「が」が連続していますが、
「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が・・・」あたりまで読んだところで、
最初の「が」は「の」であるべきなのに、なぜ「の」でないのだろう？と気になります。
「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
と書くのが普通ですよね？違いますか？
「が」の並ぶ不自然さが、逆に強調となって読者の興味をそそり、
この文は「構文解析」の目的がある、あるいは
「ことばあそび」である、というシグナルを発しています。
つまり格助詞「が」の使い方を「ひねる」こと自体が
明記された内容以外の何かを伝達しています。
Mika Jarmusz 清水美香
English to Japanese Translator
http://inJapanese.us
Noel Hunt
> 「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
>
> さらにこの例文では格助詞「が」が連続していますが、
> 「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が・・・」あたりまで読んだところで、
> 最初の「が」は「の」であるべきなのに、なぜ「の」でないのだろう？と気になります。
>
> 「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
> と書くのが普通ですよね？違いますか？
stop your application of Ga/No Conversion (ガ/ノ可変、主格/属核交替)
there?
ジャックくんの飼っていた猫の追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズにカビが
生えていた。
Mark Spahn
From: "Brian Chandler" <imagin...@despammed.com>
>
> ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。
> The cheese the rat the cat that Jack kept chased ate was mouldy.
Brian, pardon my half-day slow-wittedness in tumbling onto
what must have been the inspiration for your clever
sentence (the clue was the katakana name, which
led to a half-remembered nursery rhyme):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_House_That_Jack_Built
Imagine a translation of this in Japanese (has it been done?):
if made into one long sentence, the information would be
presented in reverse order from the English narration.
Its repetition resembles the repetition in the song
"The Twelve Days of Christmas", and it finally produces
This is the horse and the hound and the horn
That belonged to the farmer sowing his corn
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
Marc Adler
> Thank you, Brian, for coming up with this sample sentence
> that illustrates -- much better than mine did -- how much
> easier it is to understand the linear Japanese text than the
> (((stack overflow)-causing) (multiply (nested) English) sentence).
Incidentally, there is something similar to this nesting which is
actually quite natural: preposition stranding with verbs that require
prepositions.
"What did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for?"
There's five prepositions all jumbled at the end, but in this case,
the nesting is not only easy to understand, but also very natural.
Mika Jarmusz
Very good, Noel. If I were to differentiate the two, and I hope
someone will jump in if I am missing something, I'd say that the
above, with の repeating, gives the reader the sense of wordplay again,
as in 延々と続く感じ。
I hadn't noticed until you pointed out, but inserting が after 猫 gives
me a 呼吸。 (Is there a linguistic term for this?)
「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が（さ）、追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズに（ね）、カビが生えていた。」
As in, "you know Jack, it's his cat, and it chased...." but the rat
and the cheese remain relatively nondescript, until you learn that it
was moldy.
Mika Jarmusz
この日本語文章では、句(節）の順番を入れ換えることは不可能ですよね？
日本語って、語順にうるさかったんだ・・・。
Marc Adler
> Let me ask again, as it pertains to translation into Japanese:
> この日本語文章では、句(節）の順番を入れ換えることは不可能ですよね？
> 日本語って、語順にうるさかったんだ・・・。
In other words, you're asking whether the Japanese sentence (c.) can
be reworded the way the English sentence can (a. and b.), right?
a. The cheese the rat the cat that Jack kept chased ate was mouldy.
b. The cheese eaten by the rat chased by the cat kept by Jack was moldy.
c. ジャックくんの飼っていた猫の追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。
You can't, because Japanese is a left-branching language, so any
modification of a noun is going to come before the subject, and not
between the subject and the verb, as in right-branching languages.
In other words, it's not a question of word order per se, but of
linguistic typology.
mt_scratch
>> Thank you, Brian, for coming up with this sample sentence
>> that illustrates -- much better than mine did -- how much
>> easier it is to understand the linear Japanese text than the
>> (((stack overflow)-causing) (multiply (nested) English) sentence).
>>
>
> 同感です。語順に関するわかりやすい例文をありがとうございます。
>
> 日本語例文の語順についてですが、
> 名詞句（「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫」「猫が追いかけた鼠」など）
> の正しい順番は、これしかないのでは？
>
> 「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
>
> さらにこの例文では格助詞「が」が連続していますが、
> 「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が・・・」あたりまで読んだところで、
> 最初の「が」は「の」であるべきなのに、なぜ「の」でないのだろう？と気になります。
>
> 「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠のかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。」
> と書くのが普通ですよね？違いますか？
>
>
多すぎるのでそう思うだけだと思います。
「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠」ぐらいまでの「が」の連続は不自然
ではなく、「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠」と自然さでは殆ど
変わらないと思います。それ以上になると、さすがに不自然に感じます。
ただし、「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫」と「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫」では、
ニュアンスが少し違うように思います。
「ジャックくんが飼っていた猫」は「ジャックくん」が割と強調され、
「ジャックくんの飼っていた猫」は「猫」が割と強調されるような気がします。
日本語文法には弱いので論理的に説明はできませんが、普段聞き慣れている
「耳」を通じての感想です。あしからず。
桜内 実
M. Sakurauchi
Richard Thieme
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Spahn" <mark...@verizon.net>
To: <hon...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 8:14 AM
Subject: Re: long, complex sentences [OT]
>
>
> From: "Brian Chandler" <imagin...@despammed.com>
>>
>> ジャックくんの飼っていた猫が追いかけた鼠がかじったチーズにカビが生えていた。
>>
>>
>> The cheese the rat the cat that Jack kept chased ate was mouldy.
>
> Brian, pardon my half-day slow-wittedness in tumbling onto
> what must have been the inspiration for your clever
> sentence (the clue was the katakana name, which
> led to a half-remembered nursery rhyme):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_House_That_Jack_Built
> Imagine a translation of this in Japanese (has it been done?):
>
http://blog.hix05.com/blog/2008/07/_the_house_that_jack_built.html
Regards,
Richard Thieme