Re: Futurese

Someone unnamed in this post wrote:

>  >Ok, the first sentence depends upon sentence ordering in order to make it
>>clear that the horse, not I, am the one doing the disturbing.
>>  The second
>>sentence, by marking actor/patient, topic/focus, (however you want to do
>it),
>>allows you freer word order. Implicitly encoded into "disturb" is the
>notion
>>that disruption is being imposed upon me by the horse. (Which takes care of
>>your usage of "by" and "upon".)
>>         You may be asking yourself, what's the difference between sentence
>2 and
>>your example? Well, using "by" and "upon" is extrenuous; it's not that they
>>are wrong to use, but that it tells too much information for a simple
>>sentence.
to which Javier responded:

>To a Japanese-speaker, explicitly marking them is as
>essential as explicitly marking the indirect object
>or the place where the action occurs. In English, you
>say "Go home", but in Spanish we say "Vete A casa" and
>not just "Vete casa", which would sound unintelligible
>even taking into account semantics (a Spanish speaker
>would at most understand it this way: that you're a bit
>nuts and are asking your home to go).
"Essential" may be a bit overstated. For the most part, Japanese is
fairly strictly SOV, so the particles can and do regularly fall out
in everyday conversation. "Anata, sore misete kure." (show me that).
"Nani shiteru?" (what are you doing?). "Boku, hon yonderu." (I'm
reading a book.) etc.  They only become "essential" when you play
around with word order in sentences à la "Him I saw.". Japanese
children in the early stages of language normally use
subject-object-particleless speech until they begin learning the
stylistic flourishes of writing and complex sentences.

>  > More complex sentences, of course, will need these words, but at a
>>base level for an auxlang, simplicity reigns supreme. The first sentence is
>>dead simple; all one needs to know is that word order is significant and
>>three words. The second is slightly more complex, but not significantly so:
>>the speaker only needs to know that the actor/topic/whatever is _always_
>>followed by "wa," and that the patient/focus/whatever is _always_ followed
>by
>>"o."
>
>No, the focus in Japanese is not marked by "wo" but by "ga".
Yi? I'm losing it on the terminology here, but "wa" is the topic,
"ga" is the subject when a sentence requires both. In many
utterances, topic and subject are the same and can be covered with
"wa"; "ga" on its own throws a different emphasis on the sentence.
(At least, that's the way WE learned it.)

>  >For example, involving word order:
>>         1. Horse wa disturb I o.
>>         2. I o disturb (horse wa).
>>The first could be glossed as "A horse disturbs me," while the second (here
>>I've chosen to emphasize agentivity) as "I am disturbed (by a horse)."
>>         Now, let's contrast that with "By a horse pred. disturb I upon."
>For one,
>>you've got an article, which a significant portion of the world has trouble
>>with. Next, there's nothing that indicates what preposition should be used;
>>prepositions are notoriously language-specific and their usage varies. For
>>instance, one language might say "I fly ON a plane" while another might say
>  >"I fly IN a plane."
>
>I think there's a significant difference between flying IN
>a plane and flying ON it (most sincerely I think you
>wouldn't have many chances to survive if you dared do the
>second).
"I'm leaving ON a jet plane...Don't know when I'll be back again..."
You get ON a bus, ON a plane, ON a boat, but IN a car (and you can
sit ON a plane [not on top of it] *and* IN it. This is mere usage,
not actual location terminology (vs., Wir warten auf dem Zug. [We are
waiting on the train {literally sitting on top of it waiting}] and
Wir warten auf den Zug. [We are waiting on the train {we are waiting
for it (though "wait on sth." I think is possible in other idiolects
(sounds a little New Yorkish to me))}]) (conceptually in English,
though, I think ON implies some sort of ascending and alighting,
while IN implies getting in/out, sitting down). (wait on line [New
Yorkese?] wait in line; same diff, who cares?) Anyhoo, hope you get
my drift.

>  > Finally, as I already pointed out, prepositions are not
>>necessary in such a simple sentence. Hence, it is excessively convoluted.
>
>As the English/Spanish comparison I've just offered should
>show you, you can't say that something is "not necessary"
>that easily. Maybe it seems unnecessary to you, but that's
>because that's what you're native language does.
I agree with Unnamed here because s/he qualifies it with "SIMPLE
sentence" (emphasis mine). Since langs fall into SVO, SOV, yadda,
yadda, yadda, simple sentences can quite reasonably go unmarked until
you start playing around with the standard order. And even then..."Me
cake give" is inelegant but intelligible English (I take that back.
This is kinda like the "No kill I" episode of Star Trek. That could
be interpreted as "Give me the cake" (my first reaction) or "I give
the cake." Either way, though, it's not standard English word order.)

In general, when words like "essential", "necessary", or "crucial"
(no one actually used this one, but I live for drama) enter into this
kind of description, it sounds to me way too prescriptivist and
rigid, and lacking in the flexibility that natural, spoken languages
allow.

Kou