Re: Weekly Vocab 7 in Kash (part)

Roger Mills wrote:
> I'm not sure that any "typologically correct" language exists.  Even Basque,
> which is pretty aggressively SOV and suffixing,  has N-Adj.  Maybe
> Japanese??
Japanese comes pretty darn close to perfecly head-final, but there are a
couple of exceptions.  For example, numbers often follow nouns (altho
they may also precede).  So that, for example, you may have a sentence
like:

Onna  ga  san-nin    mie-ta
Woman nom 3-(person) see/be.visible-past
"(I) saw three women"
(Also, notice that the case particle follows the noun itself and not the
noun phrase)

However, I've heard this analyzed as "Sannin" being used adverbially.

Otherwise, it is remarkably consistent, auxiarilies, even auxilaries for
things like for "want" after the verb:

Sono hon  wo  kai-tai
That book acc buy-want
"I want to buy that book"

Soko  ni iki-taku-na-katta
There to go -want-not-adj.past
"I did not want to go there"

Negation is indicated by an auxilary "nai" which acts as an adjective.

There are some head-initial Sino-Japanese compounds, like Seppuku <
setsu "cut" + fuku "belly" (tsu -> gemination, geminated form of /h/ [of
which [P], "f", is an allophone] is /pp/), contrasting with the Japanese
form Harakiri < Hara "belly" Kiri "cutting".

But, other than numbers and SJ compounds, I can't think of any
deviations.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42