Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech

On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:07 PM, Javier BF wrote:

> In Japanese there are:
>
> - 'normal' verbs or "do^shi", which come in three closely related
> conjugations (1: the -u ones like "kak-u" 'to write' and "kaer-u" 'to
> return', 2: the -ru ones like "tabe-ru" 'to eat' and "mi-ru" 'to
> look', and
> 3: the irregular "suru" 'to do' and "kuru" 'to come')
>
> - "i"-adjectives or "keiyo^shi" (like "aoi" '[to be] blue/green' and
> "atarashii" '[to be] new'), very much like verbs but with their very
> different conjugation
>
> - "na"-adjectives or "keiyo^do^shi" (e.g. "shizuka na", ), not really
> verbal, since they are used with the verb "desu" 'to be' (unlike the
> "i"-adjectives which function fully as verbs in their own)
Isn't it that you can use "desu" to form polite forms of -i
adjectives, but you can't use the non-polite copula "da", the way you
can with -na adjectives?

> - attributive-only adjectives or "rentaishi" (such as "onaji",
> 'same'),
> which cannot be predicated
>
> As you can see, it is not possible to map the Japanese parts of
> speech of
> "do^shi", "keiyo^shi", "keiyo^do^shi" and "rentaishi" into the
> English POS
> of "verb" and "adjective", neither morphologically nor syntactically.
>
> OTOH, in Russian there is a POS unknown in Western languages, lying
> halfway
> between a verb and an adverb: the "category of state" or "kategoriya
> sostoyaniya". These words express the state of a person or
> environment and
> function as impersonal predicates. They are derived from adjectives
> by means
> of the adverbial ending -o. For example, "t'emnyj/t'emnaja/
> t'emnoje" 'dark'
> --> "t'emno" 'it is dark'.