Re: Futurese

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Douglas Koller, Latin & French
| Subject: Re: Futurese
|
| to which Javier responded:
| >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.)

        That is also what I learned. "Wo" is the indirect object. "Wa" is
usually the subject, since it's natural to make the topic the subject, and
is often used as such.
        However, as I recall, there is a set of verbs that require a "ga"
subject, and using only a "wa" topic with these is considered grammatically
incorrect. I think suki (like, have friendly affection) is one of them; you
have to specifically state the person doing the liking (with "ga") and the
direct object, not just name a person as "the topic" and indicate there is
liking going on.


| "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.

   I think only the car uses "in".
   Otherwise, my vague recollection from high school is:
 Very small vehicles (bicycle, skateboard, scooter): on, because you are
literally on it.
 Public vehicles: "on"
 Private vehicles: "in"

        While this doesn't make since, it fits with my limited experience
with boating. When with friends, everyone says, "get in the boat" (our
private boat). When family or friends have taken a ferry, it's "we got on
the ferry" or "we didn't get on board in time".
        Also, on campus, one hears "You can get on the courtesy van at the
stop over there," but you "get in your van to go home".

        Curious. I guess "in" is more intimate (you're in your own vehicle),
while "on" is a more temporary and less intimate state with something that
everyone shares.


| 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.)
| Kou


        This is a bit OT, but it brings up something I read before.
        I read long ago that for a sentence like "me cake give", *when
working in English*, the initial interpretation depends on if the person is
more right-brain or left-brain oriented.
        The left-brain view looks at how the words should fit based on
the... (crap, what's it called?) the grammatical position or
declension/conjugation the word should have based on the word itself. "Me"
in English is dative or accusative. So, the left brain view forces "me" into
the direct or indirect object, ending up with indirect object, based on
context with the verb. (One normally does not give away a person.) So, since
"cake" doesn't give, the interpretation becomes, "Give me cake" (give the
cake to me).
        The right-brain view is more spatial. Since the normal word order is
SVO, the brain tries to put the first noun it encounters into the subject.
Since "me" and "I" have equivalent meanings (first person pronoun), and that
meaning makes sense as the subject, that meaning becomes the subject because
it's first. So, a right brain person, like me, immediately interprets this
as "I give cake", ignoring the fact that the morpheme "me" forces the first
person pronoun into the direct or indirect object case.
        Anyway, this whole thing breaks down in languages with a fuller set
of noun and verb inflections.

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