Re: verbs = nouns?

H.S. Teoh wrote:


>Anyway, the copula-less sentences I have in mind are the noun--adjective
>ones. I guess in these cases, the stative verb explanation does make
>sense, after all. Oh, but wait... I think I thought of something. Here:
>
>         ta1 chu3 de fan4 wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
>         he  cook    rice taste    very good
>         "The rice he cooks has a very good taste."
>
>I'm not sure how to parse this using the stative verb theory. In fact, I'm
>not sure how to formally parse this, period! :-) Perhaps if you treat it
>as a topic/comment sentence, the comment part can be parsed with hao3 as a
>stative verb with wei4dao4 as the argument? Not sure about this...
The first three words are part of a relative clause modifying the rice.

[ta1 chu3 de fan4] wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
The rice which he cooks tastes very good

A more literal translation would be:
'The he-cooks-rice tastes very good.'




===============================
Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
===============================