Re: Distinct conjunctions for subordinate clauses in different case relations to main clause
| From: | Kit La Touche <kit@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 2, 2006, 20:23 |
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On Feb 2, 2006, at 1:34 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> writes:
>> ...
>> Do any natlangs y'all know of have a similar distinction in their
>> subordinate-clause conjunctions? Can you think of other case-role
>> distinctions that might be made in clausal conjunctions?
>
> Maybe Japanese? I don't know it good enough, though.
There are two main ways to make subordinate clauses in Japanese:
there's the quotative marker, *to*, as in:
anzen da to omou
safe COP QUOT feel
"I feel that it's safe."
And then there's making a relative clause headed by *no*, a pronominal:
inu ga sakana wo taberu no suki da
dog SUBJ fish OBJ eat PRO like COP
"I like when the dog eats fish."
(Weird examples, just what i could come up with off the top of my head.)
I don't think that either of these are quite relevant, if I
understood the original poster correctly. But I could be wrong.
> I perceive 'that' not as marking case on clauses, but as transforming
> a clause into a noun phrase. Put this way, the clausal noun phrase is
> still unmarked for case, yes, and the difference is only maybe one of
> view. IIRC, Japanese then adds case markers after the conjunction.
From the point of view of the formalism I adhere to, this use of
"that" is as a complementizer, heading a complementizer phrase which
can act as a complement to a verb phrase. Case isn't assigned to the
C.P. at all, though there can be some side effects on case in the
subordinate clause; if you're familiar with X-bar theory broadly, but
not this particular issue, a google for exceptional case marking
might turn some things up.
Kit La T