Re: topic/compliment & Sanskrit script

Hi Patrick,

You probably have them already, but H. S. Teoh's e-mail from 21 Jan had a
bunch of (probably) topic-comment sentences where the topic really was a
topic, not an emphasis.  (The reason Douglas Koller and H. S. Teoh were
trying to figure out if "de" was present in the underlying structure is
that "de" is used to mark adjectives - placed between adjective and noun.)

E-Ching


H. S. Teoh wrote:
>I've been observing Mandarin speakers a bit more since our discussion
>about that "pathological" example sentence that I had before:
>         ta~1 chu3de fan4 wei4dao4 hen2 hao3     (may not be exact version)
>         "The rice that he cooks has a good taste."
>
>AFAIK, we concluded that thread with the consensus that this sentence
>probably has elided a couple o' "de"'s. However, I'm not sure if this
>explanation is necessarily that strong, because I've come across sentences
>that are analogous in construction, but has no reason to drop the "de",
>eg.:
>1)      che4 wan1 tang1 wei4dao4 hen3 shiang1
>         this bowl soup  flavor   very aromatic
>         "This bowl of soup has an aromatic flavor"
>2)      ta~1 er2zhi3 ge4zhi3 hen3 gao1
>         his  son     stature very tall
>         "his son is very tall" (or, "his son has a tall stature")
>3)      ta~1 du4zhi3 hen3 fei2
>         his  belly   very fat
>         "he has a large belly" (ie., "he's very fat")
>
>Now the monkey wrench for whatever other explanations you may have had:
>4)      na4  ny3hair2 tou2fa3 you4 chang2 ge4zhi1 you4 gao1
>         that girl     hair    also long   stature also tall
>         "that girl both has long hair and is tall"
>         (hard to capture the meaning in the Mandarin -- the you4 marks
>         correlatives, similar to the Greek me'n...de construction)