Re: Weekly Vocab 8

On Sat, May 24, 2003 at 11:53:44PM +0200, Camilla Drefvenborg wrote:

> by the way, how do you handle relative clauses? for some reason, I just
> can't seem to get it 'right', i.e. get it into a pleasing state. a
> rather broad question, I know, but any details would be very welcome
> indeed.
>
> oh, and just in case someone fluent in Nihongo is listening, how does
> it do it? I know it involves rather interesting knot-tying, due to the
> lack of relative pronouns, but... well...
Nihongo wa... Japanese doesn't have a very powerful relative-clause engine.
It uses simple juxtaposition, as follows:

Since all verbs are clause-final, it follows that any verb followed by a
noun represents a clause boundary.  Therefore they're able to unambiguously
use this as the first clause modifying the noun that follows it:

        ringo wo taberu neko wa mieta
        apple ACC eat   cat TOP was-seen
        "I saw a cat that was eating an apple."

(Where ACC is the accusative marker and TOP is the topic marker.)

Or:

        neko ga taberu ringo wa mieta
        cat NOM eat    apple TOP was-seen
        "I saw an apple that was eaten by a cat."

This also takes care of the other kind of clause whose name I can't remember
right now:

        neko ga ringo wo taberu koto wa omoshiroi desu.
        cat NOM apple ACC eat matter TOP amusing is.
        "It's amusing that a cat was eating an apple."

It also allows for some of the ambiguity that Japanese is famous for;
"shinjiru hito" could, I think, mean "a person who believes" or "a person
who is believed in", depending on context.

Corrections from the more fluent welcome.

Amanda

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