Re: Trigger language?

In a message dated 1/23/2003 2:23:59 PM Pacific Standard Time,
christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes:


>
> Nope, they are just a way to make the whole thing confusing! :)) Subject
> and
> object are entities defined and working properly only with nominative-
> accusative languages, i.e. the majority of European languages. They don't
> work
> anywhere else that well (even in a nominative accusative language like
> Japanese, they don't work that well. Look at a sentence like "watashi wa
> anata
> ga suki da", meaning "I like you". Well, what is translated as a subject is
> actually a topic - particle "wa" - while what is translated as an object is
> actually a subject in the original sentence!!! - particle "ga" -).

 I'm not exactly sure I would translate "anata" as the object -- shouldn't it
be the object of a VERB to be the direct object? "Suki" is an adjective in
Japanese, meaning "liked". Something that is liked by someone (would likeable
be a good translation? Well, not exactly; it reflects personal tastes) is
"suki". Languages do not always use the same part of speech to translate the
same word. In the Romance languages, for instance, you say, "I have hunger"
or "I have thirst" using a noun and an adjective where in English you the
words "hungry" and "thirsty" are adjectives. Kankonian does have an adjective
as a legitimate part of speech, but many English adjectives exist only as
stative verbs (see -- I'm learning what some things are called from this
list!) in Kankonian, such as "esin", to be beautiful or "yin", to be
necessary.


(For those of you who are interested, you'd put "az esinas", (that/which is
beautiful) after a noun if you just wanted to use the word "beautiful without
a copula. So:

Bisedik as tzehimez az esinas.
Ebisedian is a beautiful language.)

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