Re: Sundry thoughts (was: Re: THEORY nouns and cases)

John writes:

>Right.  I was using the word "front" merely in the sense of "bring to
>the front", without any connotation of special semantics.  My contention
>was that you *cannot* use "ba" to bring just any old direct object to
>the front.
I had heard it said by some older Taiwanese that during the Japanese
occupation and under the influence of the Japanese language, one
could sometimes hear unwieldy Chinese sentences like:

Wo ba dianshi kan le. = Watashi wa terebi o mita.

Blech.

Don't know if those folks were blowing the smoke of urban legend or
if said influence has been expunged since the Japanese hightailed it
home, but I never, thankfully, heard such things during my stay.
Makes my flesh crawl and speaks to your point above.

Kou