one of the ... is/are
Vince Coleman
"One of the blessings of nature is the chemical compound or substance
derived from the living organisms, so-called natural products."
From context, and common sense, "chemical compound or substance"
should be plural. But how does that work grammatically?
Can you say, "One of the blessings of nature ARE the chemical
COMPOUNDS or SUBSTANCES derived from the living organisms, so-called
natural products." ??
"One of the blessings IS" vs. "One of the blessings ARE"
Hmmm.
But can you stick with "IS" and make compounds and substances plural?
"One of the blessings of nature IS the chemical COMPOUNDS or
SUBSTANCES derived from the living organisms, so-called natural
products."
Matthew Fitsko
On Jan 22, 4:00 pm, Vince Coleman <vi...@vince-coleman.com> wrote:
> "One of the blessings of nature IS the chemical COMPOUNDS or
> SUBSTANCES derived from the living organisms, so-called natural
> products."
rewrite your sentence.
"The chemical compounds and substances derived from living organisms,
so-called natural products, are one of the blessings of nature."
Switched around the sentence is grammatically sound (I wonder why?
Paging Mark Spahn...)
Note: I think you should change the "or" between compounds and
substances to "and", and the "the" before living organisms is
unnecessary.
Matthew Fitsko
Matthew Fitsko
> derived from the living organisms, so-called natural products."
First, "chemical compound or substance" takes the singular, so the
plural "natural products" doesn't fit with the rest of the sentence.
Second, "the chemical compound or substance" is indicating a single
thing (that is either a chemical compound or substance). This is odd
in the context of the sentence because many things can be derived from
living organisms. Like I said in my previous reply, "chemical compound
or substance" should be "chemical compoundS AND substanceS".
Another fix grammar-wise:
"One of the blessings of nature is the variety of chemical compounds
and substances derived from living organisms, so-called natural
products."
Matthew Fitsko
Mark Spahn
> SUBSTANCES derived from the living organisms, so-called natural
> products."
This is highly awkward in English, which means it's a good time to
rewrite your sentence.
"The chemical compounds and substances derived from living organisms,
so-called natural products, are one of the blessings of nature."
Switched around the sentence is grammatically sound (I wonder why?
Paging Mark Spahn...)
肼鏗
> Having a problem with English.
>
> "One of the blessings of nature is the chemical compound or substance
> derived from the living organisms, so-called natural products."
>
> From context, and common sense, "chemical compound or substance"
> should be plural. But how does that work grammatically?
>
> Can you say, "One of the blessings of nature ARE
No, because "IS" relates to "ONE"... :-)
Matthew rewrote it to obtain a subject in the plural and thus can use ARE"
> "The chemical compounds and substances derived from living organisms,
> so-called natural products, are one of the blessings of nature."
But you can also write,
> "One of the blessings of nature is the chemical compound or (/and) substance
> derived from living organisms, the so-called natural product."
Everything is in the singular, but that is OK, because it is a generic singular (like in, "the whale is not a fish but a mammal").
Regards: Hendrik
And, taking a hint from Matthew, "One of the blessings of nature is the abundance of chemical compounds or (/and) substances derived from living organisms, the so-called natural products."
But, grammar, aside, the whole sentence is fuzzy, because, although i think i know what the writer wants to say, there is a more important problem to deal with: "natural products" is not a reasonable definition of "chemical compounds" or/and "substances derived from living organisms" - that is to say, there may be products that are made from, or contain, such substances, but the subtsances themselves are not "products"...
Regards: Hendrik
--
* ìÏïóåæåÍã *
http://www.nihon-honyaku.com/
--
Vince Coleman
first suggestion.
I have absolutely no idea where I stand on the singular/plural
distinction.
When translating, I often feel that the lack of that distinction in
Japanese is a liability. Of course, that depends on the content and
what the writer wants/needs to express, but sometimes I feel that the
lack of distinction leads to unnecessary and even dangerous
vagueness. Question: do I feel that way because I am translating into
a language with the distinction? Possibly, because I never really
feel that way about Japanese when I am reading it for pleasure. Then
again, I do not read things in Japanese for pleasure where the lack of
distinction would lead to any grave misunderstandings (in other words,
I am translating technical stuff, where often the reader needs to know
if someting is singular or plural, but for pleasure I read fictional
novels).
Also, I have yet to feel any real stress or tension related to the
lack of distinction when conversing in Japanese.
So maybe I am not so attached to it as I thought...?
Matthew Fitsko
On Jan 22, 4:44 pm, "Mark Spahn" <msp...@localnet.com> wrote:
> But this seems like a good rule: When you have a sentence of the form
> A = B, where A is singlular and B is plural, or vice versa, take
> the "=" to be "is" is A is singular, or "are" if A is plural.
the sentence. That's how I was taught.
> But here's a more philosophical question:
> If you were devising a language, would you want it to have
> a singular/plural distinction, like English, or would you want
> the grammatical category "number" to be absent from your
> language, as it is in Japanese?
> My tentative answer is that the singular/plural distinction is
> more trouble than it's worth. We can take Vince Coleman's
> original question as evidence in support of this contention.
distinction isn't that big of a deal, the hypothetical Fitsko tongue
would keep the singular/plural distinction and simply ditch that pesky
subject/verb agreement rule (as some English variants already do).
Just another one of those annoyances from Latin...
Matthew Fitsko
Anthony Bryant
On Jan 22, 2008, at 2:00 AM, Vince Coleman wrote:
>
> Having a problem with English.
>
> "One of the blessings of nature is the chemical compound or substance
> derived from the living organisms, so-called natural products."
>
> From context, and common sense, "chemical compound or substance"
> should be plural. But how does that work grammatically?
>
> Can you say, "One of the blessings of nature ARE the chemical
> COMPOUNDS or SUBSTANCES derived from the living organisms, so-called
> natural products." ??
>
> "One of the blessings IS" vs. "One of the blessings ARE"
It's fairly straightforward.
ONE. IS.
Tony
Doreen Simmons
Just been too busy to join in.
Doreen
On 2008/01/22, at 17:31, Anthony Bryant wrote:
>
>>
>> "One of the blessings IS" vs. "One of the blessings ARE"
>
>
> It's fairly straightforward.
>
> ONE. IS.
>
> Tony
Doreen Simmons
jz8d...@asahi-net.or.jp
Shinya Suzuki
> My tentative answer is that the singular/plural distinction is
> more trouble than it's worth.
Glad to know this. My conclusion, after many years of learning English,
is basically the same. In many cases, the singular/plural distinction in
English sentences is completely redundant (i.e., just for the sake of
syntax). (The "subject" is often redundant as well. See below.)
Take, for example, the opening of Soseki's "I am a cat":
吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。どこで生れたかとんと見当がつかぬ。何でも
薄暗いじめじめした所でニャーニャー泣いていた事だけは記憶している。吾輩は
ここで始めて人間というものを見た。
I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I've no idea where I was born. All I
remember is that I was miaowing in a dampish dark place when, for the
first time, I saw a human being.
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/080483265X/ref=sib_dp_bod_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S006#reader-page
"I am a cat.": How can "I" be more than one cat?
"I've no idea where I was born.": "I" is redundant. Who else can be the
subject of this sentence?
"... in a dampish dark place ...": How can a single entity like a cat be
located in more than one place at the same time?
"... a human being.": We don't know at this point if the cat saw one or
more persons. What is important here is the type of being rather than
the number of beings called "human being." That's why the number is
unspecified.
Shinya Suzuki
Eric Tschetter
>
> "I've no idea where I was born.": "I" is redundant. Who else can be the
> subject of this sentence?
>
> "... in a dampish dark place ...": How can a single entity like a cat be
> located in more than one place at the same time?
>
> "... a human being.": We don't know at this point if the cat saw one or
> more persons. What is important here is the type of being rather than
> the number of beings called "human being." That's why the number is
> unspecified.
Allow me to play the devil's advocate. I'm not sure if this is really
related to plural/singular, but it is at least as related as the
statements above. That is, I want to look at the influence of articles
on how to specify exactly what is happening.
Yes, I cannot be more than one cat, but I could be THE cat. I could
become the cat of my nightmares. Similarly, I could become the cat
trapped in the damp, dark place of my nightmares, not merely a cat
trapped in some damp, dark place. Perhaps I am the cat stuck calling
out in the damp, dark place of my nightmares, when the human who saw fit
to take me in and feed me came around. Not just a human, many of those
passed without giving me even a look, no the human who gave me the look
and would be my savior. He would provide me a home. No, not just a
home, the home that would teach me just what it means to be alive.
That is, while in English I can say "a dog bit me" or "the dog bit me,"
in Japanese 犬に噛まれた leaves the listener to guess whether they were
talking about some random dog or a known dog. You can, of course, say
あの犬に噛まれた or 例の犬に噛まれた, but when you start trying to get
very specific about what does something where and how, I have found that
things tend to get a bit clunky.
At least, I have found that when I use Japanese to express some specific
event with specific actors acting in a specific way, my sentences turn
out fairly clunky. Perhaps I just don't know how to use the language
well enough to get around such clunkiness, that's a problem that is
neither here nor there. What I would really like to discuss is the
conclusion I have come to: the Japanese style of writing where the
author introduces the domain and explicitly articulates the broad
context before getting into the details, i.e. paragraphs that start like
続いて少子化問題の要因について述べます。少子化問題は「女性は子供を生む機
械である」という誤った認識から。。。, is a direct result of not having
articles to give hints towards the importance of specific nouns. In
English, it is considered stylistically better to start the paragraph
with something like, "The decreasing population in Japan..." where the
"the" tells you that the idea of the noun ([decreasing] population [in
Japan]) is important and something that we should share some sort of
knowledge consensus on (if we don't, then you, as the reader, can at
least figure out that I am going to continue talking about this
something that I call "decreasing population in Japan," perhaps
providing an explanation to fill in the knowledge gap). Were I to
instead say, "A decreasing population in Japan has led to the creation
of government programs to help mothers." Then the reader knows that the
decreasing population is the cause, but that is not as important as the
government programs, which the rest of the paragraph will discuss (note
the implication to the reader: I am not going to discuss the decreasing
population beyond this sentence). I do not think any English editor
would allow, "We will now discuss the reasons for Japan's decreasing
population. The decreasing population in Japan ..." to survive.
Note that I am not saying that the Japanese style is bad, I have found
that adding a preamble like 続いて少子化問題の要因について述べます,
helps readers of Japanese make sense of what they are reading/hearing.
Language is for communicating, therefore whatever communicates better is
better. I am much more interested in why Japanese seems to require such
preambles to foster understanding (I know I like them in Japanese)
whereas English texts with the same preambles are considered poorly
written (I find them to be redundant and unhelpful in English). The
only reason I can see is that such preambles are necessary to break
readers of Japanese out of whatever context they are in and push them
into the new context of the next section/paragraph. English, with its
incessant redundancy in repeating subjects and other contextually
available information, on the other hand, does not seem to require the
preamble.
Fuel for the discussion?
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Marc Adler
> That is, while in English I can say "a dog bit me" or "the dog bit me,"
> in Japanese 犬に噛まれた leaves the listener to guess whether they were
> talking about some random dog or a known dog. You can, of course, say
I think you have to be careful with single sentences out of context,
since they aren't really representative of language. "The dog bit me"
without any context, communicates as much meaning as "犬にかまれた", and as
"a dog bit me" for that matter. "What dog?" is what I'd ask to all
three statements, if this were a real conversation.
As for the question of whether Japanese (or any other language) is
capable of specifying objects, of course it is. All languages can. In
English, we're capable of distinguishing topics from subjects, even
though we don't have は or が.
The same applies to Shinya's point about number (which actually sounds
more like a defense against ignorant questions like "well, how do you
know how many things you're talking about in Japanese?" than a case
for the unnecessariness of number in a language): there was no point
in human history when cavemen got together and said, "So are we going
to use explicit morphological number marking, or what? Grork, what do
you think?" Languages either have number marking or not (or both).
That doesn't have anything to do with whether languages can indicate
number when needed, though, because all languages can (except maybe
Piraha, but none of the people studying the language can even speak
it, so that's all pretty suspect).
> Note that I am not saying that the Japanese style is bad, I have found
> that adding a preamble like 続いて少子化問題の要因について述べます,
> helps readers of Japanese make sense of what they are reading/hearing.
This may just have to do with linguistic custom. I remember having
difficulty getting over the conversation-opening construction
"なになにだけど" because I kept interpreting as "even though XYZ" and not as
"about XYZ," which is what it means. This construction is more common
in Japanese, I think because Japanese is left-branching, and if the
speaker wants to make sure the listener has a context to receive
subsequent information, he has to give him some kind of context if
he's going to start out by using a relative clause. A typical example
is "昨日の夜すごい夢見たよ" and then the description follows. In English, we
don't need that construction, since we can just say "Last night I had
this amazing dream where I was ..." That's the advantage of speaking a
right-branching language - our heads come first, giving the listener a
context within which to organize all subsequent information. If you
were to translate the English "a dream where I was talking to my dead
grandfather, and he told me the Fed was going to lower the prime rate
by 3/4 of a point" then you'd have something like
"昨日の夜、死んだおじいちゃんと話していて" - already, right here, the listener is going
"what the hell?" and will give a sigh of relief only when you get to
"という夢を見たよ." (This type of bait-and-switch construction is often used
in comedy.)
--
Marc Adler
Austin, TX
Gauçac eztira multçutu, eta berretu behar mengoaric, eta premiaric gabe.
Wayne Root
Agreed.
> >
Roland Hechtenberg
> "I've no idea where I was born.": "I" is redundant. Who else can be the
> subject of this sentence?
As opposed to "I have no idea here you were born."
Or "You have no idea where I was born."
Have fun,
Roland
Eric Tschetter
> dog bit me,"
> > in Japanese 犬に噛まれた leaves the listener to guess whether they were
> > talking about some random dog or a known dog. You can, of
> course, say
>
> I think you have to be careful with single sentences out of
> context, since they aren't really representative of language.
> "The dog bit me"
> without any context, communicates as much meaning as
> "犬にかまれた", and as "a dog bit me" for that matter. "What dog?"
> is what I'd ask to all three statements, if this were a real
> conversation.
Would you really need to ask "what dog?" to the statement "a dog bit me." I don't think you need to ask the question in order to figure out the main intention of the utterance: some dog bit me (of course, you will probably ask "what dog?" just for curiosity's sake, but it is not necessary to understand the original utterance). However, with "the dog bit me," the main point of the utterance moves from just being bit by a dog to indicating that you were bitten by some specific dog. I guess what I am trying to say is that "a dog bit me" stands on its own, requiring and hinting at no real context for understanding, but "the dog bit me" hints at and, in fact, requires such context to be fully understood. The Japanese 犬にかまれた, devoid of context sounds like "a dog bit me," but given proper context it can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me." If you want to specify exactly that "the dog bit me" you have to add something like あの or 例の.
--Eric Tschetter,
er...@nii.ac.jp
Shinya Suzuki
> Yes, I cannot be more than one cat, but I could be THE cat. I could
> become the cat of my nightmares.
Obviously, "the cat" is inappropriate in the translation of the J
original "我輩は猫である." My point here is that the J can mean "I am a
cat" without adding a phrase like "一匹の."
> Similarly, I could become the cat
> trapped in the damp, dark place of my nightmares, not merely a cat
> trapped in some damp, dark place. Perhaps I am the cat stuck calling
> out in the damp, dark place of my nightmares, when the human who saw fit
> to take me in and feed me came around. Not just a human, many of those
> passed without giving me even a look, no the human who gave me the look
> and would be my savior. He would provide me a home. No, not just a
> home, the home that would teach me just what it means to be alive.
Surely the a/the distinction is useful in cases like the above. But my
point is that English sentences require, unnecessarily in many cases,
singular/plural or identity markers (a/the) for syntactic reasons only.
> That is, while in English I can say "a dog bit me" or "the dog bit me,"
> in Japanese 犬に噛まれた leaves the listener to guess whether they were
> talking about some random dog or a known dog.
The fact that the speaker uttered "犬に噛まれた" with no 犬-modifiers
simply means that things like "which dog" or "how many dogs" are
irrelevant at the moment (i.e., not in the speaker's mind).
> 続いて少子化問題の要因について述べます。少子化問題は「女性は子供を生む機
> 械である」という誤った認識から。。。
<snip>
> I do not think any English editor
> would allow, "We will now discuss the reasons for Japan's decreasing
> population. The decreasing population in Japan ..." to survive.
This reminds me of a serious deficiency in the Japanese language. Namely,
the absence of relatives like who, which, where, etc. I believe this is
a/the major reason why Japanese writers have to repeat words and phrases,
perhaps overly from the NES J-E translator's perspective.
Shinya Suzuki
Shinya Suzuki
> Languages either have number marking or not (or both).
> That doesn't have anything to do with whether languages can indicate
> number when needed, though, because all languages can
Exactly. My point is that English nouns must be number-marked even when
number information is irrelevant or redundant.
> A typical example
> is "昨日の夜すごい夢見たよ" and then the description follows. In English, we
> don't need that construction, since we can just say "Last night I had
> this amazing dream where I was ..." That's the advantage of speaking a
> right-branching language - our heads come first, giving the listener a
> context within which to organize all subsequent information. If you
> were to translate the English "a dream where I was talking to my dead
> grandfather, and he told me the Fed was going to lower the prime rate
> by 3/4 of a point" then you'd have something like
> "昨日の夜、死んだおじいちゃんと話していて" - already, right here, the listener is going
> "what the hell?" and will give a sigh of relief only when you get to
> "という夢を見たよ." (This type of bait-and-switch construction is often used
> in comedy.)
As I mentioned in my reply to Eric, the above difference between English
and Japanese clause/sentence sequences seems mainly due to the
availability of the relative adverb "where" in E and the lack of its
equivalent in J.
Shinya Suzuki
Tom Donahue
> Surely the a/the distinction is useful in cases like the above. But my
> point is that English sentences require, unnecessarily in many cases,
> singular/plural or identity markers (a/the) for syntactic reasons only.
I agree. The only people who have trouble with it is translators.
Say for the past week you have been happily translating
シーンセレクション機能 as "the scene selection function".
Then in Chapter 8 you read シーンセレクション機能には
4種類があります。 Now what? If there are 4 of them, can
I still say "the scene selection function"?
So you call the writers and ask -- is there 1 function or 4?
They have a hard time even understanding the question.
シーンセレクション機能 is シーンを選択する機能。
Everybody knows what it (they) does (do), what's the
problem?
--
Tom Donahue
Doreen Simmons
perceived as necessary by its native speakers, and does not possess
those considered not necessary. Thus we can say in English "He was on
bad terms with his brother" but cannot translate it into Japanese
unless we know whether it was an elder or younger brother. Japanese,
OTOH, cannot say "bigger" or "biggest" in one word, (which most
Indo-European languages take as an essential) but has to use a
periphrasis.
FWIW
On 2008/01/23, at 18:42, Shinya Suzuki wrote:
>
> This reminds me of a serious deficiency in the Japanese language.
> Namely,
> the absence of relatives like who, which, where, etc. I believe this is
> a/the major reason why Japanese writers have to repeat words and
> phrases,
> perhaps overly from the NES J-E translator's perspective.
>
Doreen Simmons
jz8d...@asahi-net.or.jp
Marc Adler
> Would you really need to ask "what dog?" to the statement "a dog bit me."
Yeah. Isn't that how such conversations normally go?
> I guess what I am trying to say is that "a dog bit me" stands on its own, requiring and hinting at no real context for understanding,
If you're arguing for the inability of context-less sentences in two
languages to communicate exactly the same thing, then you're right.
If you're arguing that Japanese does not have a way of expressing the
nuances communicated by "a" and "the" in English, then I would have to
disagree, since it can.
> but "the dog bit me" hints at and, in fact, requires such context to be fully understood. The Japanese 犬にかまれた, devoid of context sounds like "a dog bit me," but given proper context it can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me." If you want to specify exactly that "the dog bit me" you have to add something like あの or 例の.
If you know which dog you're talking about, or if you know there's
only a dog and a cat, 犬にかまれた could communicate the same information as
"the dog bit me."
Either way, my basic point is that using context-less examples tells
you very little about how language works, since the only time there
isn't any context is when people sit around arguing about context-less
examples. <g>
Marc Adler
> Exactly. My point is that English nouns must be number-marked even when
> number information is irrelevant or redundant.
I've heard Chinese people argue the same about tense marking in verbs.
"You know it happened in the past, so why do you have to keep using
past tense verb forms?"
> As I mentioned in my reply to Eric, the above difference between English
> and Japanese clause/sentence sequences seems mainly due to the
> availability of the relative adverb "where" in E and the lack of its
> equivalent in J.
Actually, I think it's the other way round. Left-branching languages
tend not to have relative pronouns/adverbs, because there's no
possibility of confusing the main verb from the verb in a relative
clause, since left-branching languages are rarely (never?) VSO (or
VOS).
In other words, relative clauses in left-branching languages come
before the head noun, but the verb of the main clause comes after the
noun, so no explicit relativization marker is needed.
The opposite is true of right-branching languages. For example, "who"
is needed to distinguish between:
1) The man walks
and
2) The man who walks.
In Japanese, the relative clause verb 歩く would come before the noun,
but the main clause verb would come after, so there's no possibility
of confusion.
1) 男が歩く
2) 歩く男
Note that in English we can dispense with relative pronouns and
adverbs in cases where the subject of the relative clause comes
between the head noun and the relative clause verb.
1) The man [whom/that] I know
This, I think, proves my theory that right-branching languages use
relative pronouns and adverbs in order to distinguish the verbs of
relative clauses from the verb of the main clause.
Alan Siegrist
> Japanese,
> OTOH, cannot say "bigger" or "biggest" in one word, (which most
> Indo-European languages take as an essential) but has to use a
> periphrasis.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but this depends on how you define a
"word" which is a concept foreign to Japanese grammar. As you know, Japanese
does not use spaces to divide a sentence into words, so any such division is
arbitrary. I believe it is equally valid to consider もっと [motto] in the
construct もっと大きい [mottoookii] a prefix to 大きい [ookii] in the same
manner that -er is a suffix to the word "bigger."
One only gets into such academic distinctions when one attempts to use
concepts like the "word" from European grammar and apply them to the
analysis of the Japanese language.
This problem lies only in the analysis, not in any deficiency of the
language itself.
Regards,
Alan Siegrist
Orinda, CA, USA
Marc Adler
> arbitrary. I believe it is equally valid to consider もっと [motto] in the
> construct もっと大きい [mottoookii] a prefix to 大きい [ookii] in the same
> manner that -er is a suffix to the word "bigger."
Normally, words are considered words and not affixes if they can be
used alone. もっと can, so I think it's considered a word. "-er" can't,
however, and is therefore not a word.
I agree with your general point, however. Analyses of one language in
terms of the structures of another rarely provide useful insights into
either language.
Benjamin Barrett
Even easier is to take the case of longer adjectives (beautiful,
excellent, hirsute, etc.), where you find that English doesn't fare any
better than Japanese in comparatives and superlatives. BB
Alan Siegrist
> > I believe it is equally valid to consider もっと [motto] in the
> > construct もっと大きい [mottoookii] a prefix to 大きい [ookii] in the
same
> > manner that -er is a suffix to the word "bigger."
>
> Normally, words are considered words and not affixes if they can be
> used alone. もっと can, so I think it's considered a word. "-er" can't,
> however, and is therefore not a word.
もっと always modifies whatever comes after it, whether an adjective or a
noun. Sometimes it is translated into the word "more" in English as in the
phrase "more strawberries" but it is a mere coincidence that "more" is a
separate word and that we do not have the word "strawberrier" in English (or
perhaps maybe we should...).
Whenever もっと stands alone, it is short for something else like もっと早
く.
Regards,
Alan Siegrist @ Stuck with Billy Idol singing "more, more, more"
Orinda, CA, USA
Marc Adler
> もっと always modifies whatever comes after it, whether an adjective or a
> noun. Sometimes it is translated into the word "more" in English as in the
> phrase "more strawberries" but it is a mere coincidence that "more" is a
> separate word and that we do not have the word "strawberrier" in English (or
> perhaps maybe we should...).
>
> Whenever もっと stands alone, it is short for something else like もっと早
> く.
Are you saying that any word that modifies another word isn't word, or
is only "coincidentally" a word? Most words modify other words. The
word "goes" always modifies something that's "going." Does that make
it not a word?
Incidentally, the reason we use "more" and "most" to qualify some
adjectives in English is because around half our vocabulary comes from
a Romance language (Norman French), and Romance languages tend to use
separate words for comparatives and superlatives. With those
adjectives, we tend to imitate the Romance model.
Also, the meaning of "more" is different in "more strawberries" and
"more beautiful." The former indicates quantity, the latter degree.
大工
> I don't mean to be argumentative, but this depends on how you define a
> "word" which is a concept foreign to Japanese grammar.
> This problem lies only in the analysis, not in any deficiency of the
> language itself.
I am sure you can heear linguists shouting "bravo!" somewhere...
By the way, in German one can express what in English HAS to be done via dependent clauses (which are, in many cases also relative clauses - as in example 2) in more or less the same way Japanese one does it in Japanese:
Example 1:
"机に置いた夲は王様のものだ"（"机に置いている夲は王様のものだ"）
"Das auf dem Schreibtisch liegende Buch gehoert dem Koenig"
As an aside, you can even say: "Das auf dem Schreibtisch liegende Buch ist des Koenigs (Buch)", whereby "ist des Koenigs (Buch)" looks like structural chokuyaku of 王様のものだ but is proper, abeit old-fashioned, German.
We are not supposed to say (in standard English), "The on-the-desk-lying book belongs to the king" (chokuyaku, "The on-the-desk-lying book is the king's (book)")
Example 2:
"踊りに参加した人..."
"Die am Tanz teilnehmenden Leute..."
chokuyaku, "The in-on-the-dance-joined people..." -> standard English,
"The people who joined in on the dance..."
Why can we do such a thing in Japanese and German but not in English? Japanese can do it for its own reasons (and even though the distinct verb form employed for this purpose in the past has disappeared) while German can do it (if not for other reasons, too) because it has retained case markers that we no longer find in English - that includes case markers on participles that are used as adjectives (liegend -> das ... liegende). "Left-branching" and "right-branching" are in THIS case obviously NOT going to be sufficient as explanations. :-)
What i am trying to get at is that structural similarities you observe in two languages you compare (on the surface) may have rather different underlying "causes", and to start it would be better to compare language families rather then just two languages. Also, what the recent discussion about what one can or cannot say in English/ Japanese indicates perhaps more than anything else is that most of us have no, or hardly any, training/experience in linguistics (flame-taisaku: this is not meant as a put-down of any sort but simply an observation), and although not having such training/experience need not be an impediment in regards to most of the work we do as translators, it can be an impediment in some cases (as this thread exemplifies). :-)
As has been pointed out, trying to figure out whether 犬 means "a dog", "dogs" "the dog", or "the dogs" is only a problem if one has no, or removes, context - and often the context is extralingual (a really good illustration of this point is the obvious disparity between general information websites and online dictionaries in regards to the expression 亜麻仁油 - from using dictionaries alone we would never know that there is a vital practical distinction betwen "flaxseed oil" and "linseed oil").
Regards: Hendrik
--
* 南風言語業 *
http://www.nihon-honyaku.com/
--
Matt Stanton
> I don't mean to be argumentative, but this depends on how you define a
> "word" which is a concept foreign to Japanese grammar.
grammar. I'm looking at Benesse's 読解表現国語辞典 here, and under 単語 it
provides a stock definition and the sentence: 「花が赤い」という文は、「花」「が」「赤い」の三つ
の単語で構成されている。
> As you know, Japanese does not use spaces to divide a sentence into words, so any such division is
> arbitrary.
of the word is very real to Japanese people from an early age.
> I believe it is equally valid to consider もっと [motto] in the
> construct もっと大きい [mottoookii] a prefix to 大きい [ookii] in the same
> manner that -er is a suffix to the word "bigger."
school students, describes もっと as an adverb (副詞), not a prefix (接頭語).
This is as you would expect, because while an adverb can be used
alone, a prefix (e.g. 不) must always be bound to the front of a word.
Matt Stanton
Edward Lipsett /t
>
> A word, which is 単語 in Japanese, is not a concept foreign to Japanese
> grammar.
The concept may not be foreign, but there is considerable debate in
linguistics as to whether the concept of "word" as it exists in Western
languages actually exists in Japanese.
It is quite difficult to define exactly what a word might be in Japanese.
--
Edward Lipsett
Intercom, Ltd.
Fukuoka, Japan
Tel: 092-712-9120
Fax: 092-712-9220
trans...@intercomltd.com
http://www.intercomltd.com
Eric Tschetter
>
> Yeah. Isn't that how such conversations normally go?
Nope, I would probably respond with "Oh, I'm sorry, have you had a
doctor look at it yet?" Because the specific dog is unimportant, if it
were important, the speaker would have specified it with something other
than "a."
>> I guess what I am trying to say is that "a dog bit me" stands on its own, requiring and hinting at no real context for understanding,
>
> If you're arguing for the inability of context-less sentences in two
> languages to communicate exactly the same thing, then you're right.
"A dog bit me" stands perfectly well on its own and does not require
context to be understood. "The dog bit me," on the other hand, does
require context. And, perhaps surprisingly, 犬に噛まれた, devoid of
context, expresses the exact same thing as "a dog bit me" (also devoid
of context) but it requires more symbols in order to express "the dog
bit me."
> If you're arguing that Japanese does not have a way of expressing the
> nuances communicated by "a" and "the" in English, then I would have to
> disagree, since it can.
Does Japanese have a succinct way of doing it that is used in common,
every-day speech? If so, please give me an example, because if you
start peppering your speech with 例の and 或る, you are *not* speaking
understandable Japanese.
>
>> but "the dog bit me" hints at and, in fact, requires such context to be fully understood. The Japanese 犬にかまれた, devoid of context sounds like "a dog bit me," but given proper context it can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me." If you want to specify exactly that "the dog bit me" you have to add something like あの or 例の.
>
> If you know which dog you're talking about, or if you know there's
> only a dog and a cat, 犬にかまれた could communicate the same information as
> "the dog bit me."
What about that sentence is different from what I said: 犬に噛まれた,
devoid of context sounds like "a dog bit me," but given proper context
it can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me."
> Either way, my basic point is that using context-less examples tells
> you very little about how language works, since the only time there
> isn't any context is when people sit around arguing about context-less
> examples. <g>
Except, in English it is only a context-less example when you use "the,"
it is perfectly viable and does not need any context whatsoever when
using "a."
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Marc Adler
> It is quite difficult to define exactly what a word might be in Japanese.
I think Matt's example would be pretty straightforward to the average
Japanese, regardless of arguments linguists may have about whether,
say, ければ should be considered an independent morphological unit or
not. That kind of rarified theorizing isn't what I (at least) had in
mind when I said that もっと is a word.
Marc Adler
> Nope, I would probably respond with "Oh, I'm sorry, have you had a
> doctor look at it yet?" Because the specific dog is unimportant, if it
> were important, the speaker would have specified it with something other
> than "a."
The specific dog would matter to _me_, if I were standing there
looking at teeth marks in your arm oozing blood.
> >> I guess what I am trying to say is that "a dog bit me" stands on its own, requiring and hinting at no real context for understanding,
Well, any context-free utterance in any language is going to carry
some kind of connotation.
> "A dog bit me" stands perfectly well on its own and does not require
> context to be understood. "The dog bit me," on the other hand, does
> require context. And, perhaps surprisingly, 犬に噛まれた, devoid of
> context, expresses the exact same thing as "a dog bit me" (also devoid
> of context) but it requires more symbols in order to express "the dog
> bit me."
Both English sentences require more "symbols" to express either
meaning than the Japanese, which has no article whatsoever.
I still don't see what you're getting at.
> Does Japanese have a succinct way of doing it that is used in common,
> every-day speech? If so, please give me an example, because if you
> start peppering your speech with 例の and 或る, you are *not* speaking
> understandable Japanese.
If you go back and read what I wrote, you'd see that I've been saying
that in "common, every-day speech," 犬にかまれた could be either "a dog" or
"the dog." If I'm in a house with a dog and a cat, and someone utters
the phrase, then the English equivalent would be "the dog bit me." If
I'm out on the street, then it would probably be "a dog."
You don't have to use any 例の or whatever at all. The meaning depends
on the context.
can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me." If you want to specify
exactly that "the dog bit me" you have to add something like あの or 例の.
You're contradicting yourself. You say, on the one hand, that 犬にかまれた
can mean "the dog bit me," but then you say that if you want to
"specify exactly" then you have to add something.
You don't have to add anything.
> What about that sentence is different from what I said: 犬に噛まれた,
> devoid of context sounds like "a dog bit me," but given proper context
> it can switch over to meaning "the dog bit me."
Yes, exactly. My point is that context-less sentences are of little
value. Give me the context, and I'll tell you whether the correct
English would be "a" or "the."
> Except, in English it is only a context-less example when you use "the,"
> it is perfectly viable and does not need any context whatsoever when
> using "a."
Either one is a context-less example, since there's no context. You
could say either, and the amount of meaning I could derive from either
would be the same. "The dog" is some specific dog. "A dog" would be
some random dog. That's it. If you want to translate that into
Japanese, you'd have to put something on the Japanese, but then again,
you're doing the same thing to the English. You "have" to put the
"the" on the English to communicate that definiteness.
Wait a second. I might've mistaken where you were coming from. Are you
siding with Shinya, saying that English requires a bunch of explicit
baggage even though it's understood from context (number marking,
articles, etc.)?
Eric Tschetter
> can mean "the dog bit me," but then you say that if you want
> to "specify exactly" then you have to add something.
I'm saying that there is no common, natural Japanese utterance that will get the same reaction out of a Japanese speaker as randomly saying "the dog bit me" will from an English speaker. The reason for that is because, as you say, the Japanese relies on the context to specify the difference between "a" and "the." Therefore, devoid of context, 犬にかまれた takes on the meaning "a dog bit me" while, given context, it quickly becomes "the dog bit me." On the other hand, when you randomly say "the dog bit me" to some arbitrary speaker of English, they *must* answer the question "what dog?" before they can make sense of the utterance.
Even if we have a cat and a dog in the house and I got bit by a dog, I could still say "a dog bit me," and in that case it _probably_ means a dog other than the one in my house. Speakers of Japanese, though, would have to ask for clarification to realize that 犬にかまれた means some dog other than the one staring them in the face.
As for what sparked the original comment, I was hoping to operationally provide evidence for the idea (fact?) that viewing "a" as merely a singular marker and not as an existential qualifier produces a skewed view of the nuance and poetry of English.
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Marc Adler
> I'm saying that there is no common, natural Japanese utterance that will get the same reaction out of a Japanese speaker as randomly saying "the dog bit me" will from an English speaker.
Okay. But you'll give me that people rarely just up and say random
things in real life, right? Because that's my problem with this
scenario. It's just not representative of how language is used, and
therefore can't really tell us much about language.
Marc Adler
> "机に置いた夲は王様のものだ"（"机に置いている夲は王様のものだ"）
>
> "Das auf dem Schreibtisch liegende Buch gehoert dem Koenig"
This is still a relative clause, even though it's placed before the head.
> We are not supposed to say (in standard English), "The on-the-desk-lying book belongs to the king" (chokuyaku, "The on-the-desk-lying book is the king's (book)")
But you can say things like "he's a beer-drinking, football-watching,
skirt-chasing no-good lout."
> Why can we do such a thing in Japanese and German but not in English? Japanese can do it for its own reasons (and even though
You can in English, as I pointed out above. The usage is limited, like
it is in German (English: low-register, German: high-register).
In fact, Russian uses this same type of construction, but it might be
a stylistic borrowing from German ("лежащая на столе книга").
> used as adjectives (liegend -> das ... liegende). "Left-branching" and "right-branching" are in THIS case obviously NOT going to be sufficient as explanations. :-)
Well, left-branching and right-branching are simply fundamental
aspects of a language, and often allow exceptions (as you have pointed
out). None of this changes the fact that German is a fundamentally
right-branching language, and that Japanese is a fundamentally
left-branching language.
What's interesting about the German left-branching constructions is
that they perhaps give us an indication of how languages might undergo
a change in branching.
Mark Spahn
aspects of a language, and often allow exceptions (as you have pointed
out). None of this changes the fact that German is a fundamentally
right-branching language, and that Japanese is a fundamentally
left-branching language.
What's interesting about the German left-branching constructions is
that they perhaps give us an indication of how languages might undergo
a change in branching.
--
Marc Adler
Austin, TX
Mark Spahn
Shinya Suzuki
> Actually, I think it's the other way round. Left-branching languages
> tend not to have relative pronouns/adverbs, because there's no
> possibility of confusing the main verb from the verb in a relative
> clause, since left-branching languages are rarely (never?) VSO (or
> VOS).
A noun at the end of a clause can be postmodified by a relative
clause in an English sentence. A Japanese clause or sentence rarely ends
with a noun. This seems to be the main reason why relatives are
undeveloped in Japanese.
> In other words, relative clauses in left-branching languages come
> before the head noun, but the verb of the main clause comes after the
> noun, so no explicit relativization marker is needed.
>
> The opposite is true of right-branching languages. For example, "who"
> is needed to distinguish between:
>
> 1) The man walks
>
> and
>
> 2) The man who walks.
>
> In Japanese, the relative clause verb 歩く would come before the noun,
> but the main clause verb would come after, so there's no possibility
> of confusion.
>
> 1) 男が歩く
>
> 2) 歩く男
>
> Note that in English we can dispense with relative pronouns and
> adverbs in cases where the subject of the relative clause comes
> between the head noun and the relative clause verb.
>
> 1) The man [whom/that] I know
>
> This, I think, proves my theory that right-branching languages use
> relative pronouns and adverbs in order to distinguish the verbs of
> relative clauses from the verb of the main clause.
??
E1: He is the man who knows me.
E2: He is the man [whom/that] I know.
"the man" is the complement of the sentence in both E1 and E2.
"the man" in E1 is the subject of the relative clause in E1, while "the
man" in E2 is the object of the relative (ellipsed) clause. The
syntactic role of the main verb "is" is identical in the two sentences.
Nothing remarkable about the corresponding Japanese sentences:
J1: 彼は私を知っている男です。
J2: 彼は私が知っている男です。
You wrote earlier:
> If you
> were to translate the English "a dream where I was talking to my dead
> grandfather, and he told me the Fed was going to lower the prime rate
> by 3/4 of a point" then you'd have something like
> "昨日の夜、死んだおじいちゃんと話していて" - already, right here, the listener is going
> "what the hell?" and will give a sigh of relief only when you get to
> "という夢を見たよ." (This type of bait-and-switch construction is often used
> in comedy.)
Your complaint is my complaint too. The main subject (or topic marker) and
the main verb tend to be widely separated in a long sentence due to the
lack of devices like relatives in Japanese.
Shinya Suzuki
hira...@freenet.de
> right-branching language, and that Japanese is a fundamentally
> left-branching language.
Marc Adler
> wondered - as a kind of complaint - why such an unlogical language like
> English (sorry, but I think there is no "logical" natural language at all,
It's perfectly logical to me (even with its unlogical formations like
"illogical"). <g>
> but native speakers often consider their native language as "logical") is
> used as a kind of "standard" or "reference" language for the discussion of
> issues of modern linguistics.
The answer is money and military might.
> Please correct me when I am totally wrong. It may be that I confuse
> SPO/SOP-structure with left/right branching. For quite a long time, I
In English, we use S, O, and V. German definitely shows a tendency
toward SOV, if dependent-clause structures are considered more ancient
and the main clause position of verbs an innovation. It's certainly
easier to imagine a switch from SOV to SVO only in main clauses than
to explain why the verb got moved to the end in dependent clauses (at
least, to my untutored eye.)
> thought, if you have an SOP-structured language, this language would
> automatically be left-branching. However, Farsi is at least an exception:
> The predicate is usually found at the last position (as in Japanese), but
> attributes to nouns usually are put behind the noun (therefore:
> right-branching).
It is true that left-branching languages have a strong tendency to be
SOV (note that this puts the verb of the relative clause next to the
head, obviating the need for relative pronouns, etc.), but I think not
all (or even most) SOV languages are left-branching.
> Another idea: why not leave all that left-right stuff? Since left-branching
> languages have the modifying phrases in a (time-related) position before the
> word they refer to, why not say past-branching and future-branching or
> something in that direction (at least for the sake of political correctness
Well, I think it's just convention. I suppose there might be a couple
of incensed Mongolian linguists out there who think it should be
"top-branching" and "bottom-branching." People also say head-first and
head-last, though. That doesn't step on anybody's toes, does it? <g>
(Oh wait, that might be insulting to all those headless linguists out
there...)
--
Marc Adler
Austin, TX
Gauçac eztira multçutu, eta berretu behar mengoaric, eta premiaric gabe.
Marc Adler
> A noun at the end of a clause can be postmodified by a relative
> clause in an English sentence. A Japanese clause or sentence rarely ends
> with a noun. This seems to be the main reason why relatives are
> undeveloped in Japanese.
That's a factor of the SOV-ness of the language, which most
left-branching languages are. I don't think this is a coincidence.
> "the man" is the complement of the sentence in both E1 and E2.
> "the man" in E1 is the subject of the relative clause in E1, while "the
> man" in E2 is the object of the relative (ellipsed) clause. The
> syntactic role of the main verb "is" is identical in the two sentences.
Right, but in this case "is" comes first (since English is SVO), so
it's automatically recognized as the main verb. I should've used
different terminology, since my explanation doesn't take into account
nested clauses, but, either way, relative pronouns are needed to
indicate that a subsequent verb belongs to another clause, since its
position would be the same as a verb governed by the noun immediately
preceding it.
> Nothing remarkable about the corresponding Japanese sentences:
> J1: 彼は私を知っている男です。
> J2: 彼は私が知っている男です。
That's right, but I'm not sure how this is relevant, since the
position of the verb is still such that there is no ambiguity
regarding the fact that everything after the は and preceding the 男 is
a relative clause connected to 男. You don't need a relative pronoun,
since the relative clause verb immediately precedes the head, and the
main clause verb (copula) follows it.
In other words, I'm arguing that relative pronouns are used out of a
necessity to disambiguate the function of a subsequent verb. In
Japanese, the function can't be ambiguous since verbs of different
functions come in different places, so there is not that necessity,
and therefore Japanese doesn't have relative pronouns.
> Your complaint is my complaint too. The main subject (or topic marker) and
> the main verb tend to be widely separated in a long sentence due to the
> lack of devices like relatives in Japanese.
Well, I'm not complaining. Japanese is just fine the way it is. It's
great, in fact. <g> However, in order to bring the main subject and
main verb closer together, you'd need to do more than use a relative.
You'd have to change Japanese to SVO.
Still, there's strategies for getting around what you view as a
problem. The most common is probably just breaking up the clause with
で after introducing the head early on.
1) 昨日来た人で、背が小さくて、茶髪で、変な帽子をかぶっていたんだけど、そんな人、見た？
instead of
2) 背が小さくて、茶髪で、変な帽子をかぶっていて、昨日来た人、見た？
Of course, this isn't allowed in writing, which is really the only
place where the problem of long sentences occurs, but there you have
it.
Shinya Suzuki
> However, in order to bring the main subject and
> main verb closer together, you'd need to do more than use a relative.
> You'd have to change Japanese to SVO.
Again the point about SVO is that O is a noun that can be directly
connected with a following relative (clause) (i.e., postmodification),
which cannot be the case with SOV. I'm still not sure about the
relevance of what you call "the function of verbs" in comparing SVO and
SOV.
Anyway, my simplistic summary is:
English is basically SVO (i.e., noun-ending), therefore it has/needs
relatives.
Japanese is basically SOV (i.e., verb-ending), therefore it doesn't
have/need relatives.
> Still, there's strategies for getting around what you view as a
> problem. The most common is probably just breaking up the clause with
> で after introducing the head early on.
>
> 1) 昨日来た人で、背が小さくて、茶髪で、変な帽子をかぶっていたんだけど、そんな人、見た？
>
> instead of
>
> 2) 背が小さくて、茶髪で、変な帽子をかぶっていて、昨日来た人、見た？
>
> Of course, this isn't allowed in writing, which is really the only
> place where the problem of long sentences occurs, but there you have
> it.
Right. And again and again we encounter long Japanese sentences where
the subject and verb are widely separated and words/phrases are
repetitive....
Shinya Suzuki @ will be off-line for a few days
Marc Adler
> Again the point about SVO is that O is a noun that can be directly
> connected with a following relative (clause) (i.e., postmodification),
> which cannot be the case with SOV. I'm still not sure about the
> relevance of what you call "the function of verbs" in comparing SVO and
> SOV.
Well, in left-branching languages, a verb before a head functions to
modify the head, whereas one after a head is the verb governed by that
head. Ergo, no need for relativizers. The position of the verb
determines its function in this sense.
In right-branching languages, verbs can only come after heads, so you
need a way of distinguishing their functions.
I'll take your competing theory (the Suzuki Theory) under
consideration, and maybe we can continue our academic theorizing at
the next Congress of Branched Linguistics (aka not-honyaku).