Re: CHAT: Religions (was: Visible planets)

Phillip Driscoll wrote:
> Not so weird. English often drops the connective word:
>
>    Here's the book you wanted.
>    vs.  Here's the book that you wanted.
>
>    There's the man I saw at the bank.
>    vs.  There's the man whom I saw at the bank.
Modern Japanese doesn't even have any kind of connective word:

Kesa         jimusho ni kita hito   wa  dare?
This.morning office  to came person top who?
Who is the person who came to the office this morning?

Ashita   iku tokoro wa  amari tookunai
Tomorrow go  place  top very  distant-not
The place we're going to tomorrow is not very distant

Yuube      yonde   ita shinbun   wa  doko?
Last.night reading was newspaper top where?
Where is the newspaper that I was reading last night?

Classical Japanese had special verb forms for relative clauses, for
example, in the second sentence it would've been something like (I'm not
completely sure if I'm right) _ashita ikuru tokoro_ instead of _ashita
iku tokoro_

I don't know if it was a complete paradigm, however, as I've only seen
examples using the present tense.

Because Japanese is rigidly verb-final, the prescence of a verb signals
the end of a clause.

Sometimes there can be ambiguities, tho, between two sentences and a
relative clause situation.  A song I have contains the line "dare yori
mo hikari wo hanatsu/ shounen yo shinwa ni nare!" which can be either
"You shine brighter than anyone else.  Young boy, become the legend!"
(the translation I've seen) or "Young boy who sines brighter than anyone
else, become the legend!" which depends on whether _dare yori mo hikari
wo hanatsu_ "He/you shine(s) brighter than anyone else" is an
independent sentence or a relative clause modifying _shounen_ "young
boy"

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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