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Re: Weekly Vocab 8

From:Amanda Babcock <langs@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 18:39
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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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>