Watashi no atama ga itai
Jimmy Hsu
>> Jimmy Hsu (jh...@pacific.net.sg) wrote:
>> >As before, K.Nabeshima-san (UC, Berkeley Linguistics Dept) offers an
>>indepth analysis of the above question. I quote him in full:
>> > "First, my acceptabilities. (They are a little different from
>> > "grammaticality, but I use the same notation (*, ??, ?) anyway.)
>> >
>> > ">(1) a. ?? Watashi no atama ga itai
>> > > b. Watashi wa atama ga itai
>>
>> I don't understand what is wrong with (1) a. For instance it serves as
>> an answer to the question "dare no atama ga itai"?
>>
>> > >(1)' a. ?? Watashi no atama wa itai
>>
Though that may well be true, if you examine the conversation of Japanese
closely, (which I don't claim I do for this one) my guess is that
in the situation where we know somebody has headache but we don't know who,
conversation might be as follows:
(2) A: dare ga atama ga itai no?
B: watashi desu.
Jimmy Hsu
As nsr250-san wrote (sorry this person didn't sign his/her name):
> 'Watashi no atama ga itai' is the answer for 'Whose head has ache?' then
> 'Watashi wa atama ga itai' is the answer for 'How are you feelin'?'
> Normally, as a Japanese, I say neither. I'd say just 'Atama ga itai,'
> omitting the subject, as you can see.
Watashi wa atama ga itai... is similar in structure to (ano hito wa)
kami no ke ga nagai. Japanese who are learning English tend to use the
same pattern in English and say "His hair is long" which is okay in
English, BUT we also say in English "He has long hair." Now, when
americans learn Japanese, they tend to say, "Ano hito wa nagai kamino ke
ga arimasu."
Hmmmmm... just a thought.
Laura
kim...@hawaii.edu
Jimmy Hsu
> ..... I have been reading this "advice" of leaving out pronouns
>and found it sort of grating to my eyes. I have had several
>occurances when I did leave out the pronouns and my listeners had
> to repeatedly ask me who or what I was talking about.
Laura Kimoto replied:
I recall one incident when a classmate of mine (back in college) said,
Eric: Kyou jugyou wa arimasen deshita
Laura: Doushite? Sensei wa byooki ni narimashita ka?
Eric: Iie, kaigi e ikimasu kara...
Laura: Darega?
Eric: Sensei.
Laura: Aa, kaigi e irasshaimasu kara ...
Eric was right in leaving out the subject Sensei, using 'irassharu'
would've made things clearer. In a conversation like this, the subject
(or is it topic) is usually understood, and WA is used only when we
change the subject. But, (as I always tell my students) if this were a
one-sided statement / speech/ monologue / narration, then stating:
Kyou Sensei ga kaigi ni irassshaimashita kara, watashi wa jugyoo
ga arimasen deshita.
Or, something like that.
This entire topic of 'ommission' is being discussed today or tomorrow at
AAS (Assoc. of Asian Studies) conference here in Hawaii (I'm in Honolulu
right now). I'll be sure to keep my ears open for more info.
aloha, Laura
H.L. van Kooten
Jimmy Hsu <jh...@pacific.net.sg> wrote:
>Ben Bullock said:
> Eric: Kyou jugyou wa arimasen deshita
> Laura: Doushite? Sensei wa byooki ni narimashita ka?
> Eric: Iie, kaigi e ikimasu kara...
> Laura: Darega?
> Eric: Sensei.
> Laura: Aa, kaigi e irasshaimasu kara ...
I find the third sentence:
Kaigi e ikimasu kara
quite unclear, and I can imagine that Japanese have diffulties with
it, just because of the fact that from the context it's not clear who
will go to the meeting (it could be you instead of the teacher). What
I also find strange, is that Eric in the first sentence uses a past
tense, but in the third sentence suddenly a present tense. People
might get confused by that too.
But for example, if everybody in the class knew that the same teacher
is very fond of playing soccer, then you could have said something
like:
Iie, mata sakkaa ni ikun dakara
...or something like that.
Loek.
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