Re: Mandarin demonstratives (Re: Charyan novel! (was: Re: [CONLANG] I'm back!))

>From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
>Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:26:35 -0500
>
>On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 09:59:08AM -0500, Adam Walker wrote:
>[snip]
> > In Chinese there's this weird (to my English L1 perspective)
>construction
> > for giving locations.
> >
> > Q: wo3de ke4ben3 zai4 na3li?  Where is my text book? (my textbook at
>where?)
> > A: zai4 wo3 zhe4li.  Here.  (At my here.)
> > or A: zai4 ni3 na4li.  There.  (At your there.)
>[snip]
>
>Hmm, I'd think of it more like "over here where I am" and "over there
>where you are". I'm not sure the pronouns here are possessive. (But then
>again, that's just my "gut-feeling" understanding of the language.)
>
>
>T
These pronouns don't feel possessive to you?  Then this construct is even
weirder than I thought.  Mandarin is so baroque.  So you'd lit-trans that as
"At me here" and "At you there"?  That makes my skin crawl.  I'm going by
the reluctant explination my tutor gave me when I freaked over that
construction (she didn't realize I was having an epiphany) and the mistakes
my ESL students make in their spoken English.  (They tend to do *other*
interesting things in written.)

adam

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