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Re: Mandarin Relative Clauses?

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Friday, November 17, 2000, 13:23
On Fri, 17 Nov 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Hmm, it seems, after I think about it, that there are actually *three* > different constructions we're talking about here: > 1) adjective without "de", eg. "hong2 che1" (red car) > Very tight binding, can easily pick up idiomatic meanings. > 2) adjective with "de", eg. "hong2 de che1" (car which is red) > Not so tightly binding, doesn't have idiomatic meanings, and > usually describes a particular instance of "car" which is "red" > (rather than a general category). > 3) relative clause, eg. "che1 shi4 wo2 chuang4 huai4 de" (car [which] > is the one I crashed) > Very loose binding, almost behaving like an adjoined sentence. > > But the monkey wrench in all of this is that, depending on context, (2) > and (3) may be interchangeably used to express the same idea. So perhaps > it's more of a grammatical differentiation than anything else...
Then it may be merely a difference between light and heavy relative clauses. In English, a light relative clause can hold the subject slot: Who does not work, does not eat. But a heavier relative clause needs to go to the end, with a dummy "it" inserted in the apparent subject slot: It is a wise child who knows his own father. which would sound bizarre as: *Who knows his own father is a wise child.
> CAVEAT: my dialect of Mandarin may not be 100% the same as the one they > use in mainland China. So don't take this as gospel truth :-)
What, you speak Old Testament Chinese? :-) -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter