Re: Mandarin Relative Clauses?

On Thu, Nov 16, 2000 at 05:03:08AM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
> What I want to say is that `hong putaojiu' (red wine) or `hao de
> pengyou' (good friend(s)) is a construction like `he cha de ren' (tea
> drinking persion, person who drinks tea).  I think this is an elegant
> analysis, since adjectives are actually verbs in Mandarin and with
> other verbs (like `to drink'+ obj), a pre-posed clause adjoined with
> `de' is analysed as a relative clause.
Hmm. I don't know what the "formal" analysis is, but in my mind, the above
examples differ in that "hong" is an attributive modifier to "putaojiu",
while "hao de" is a *predicative* modifier. (I'm borrowing this analysis
from classical Greek; I'm not sure how else to explain it.)

> Examples (I'll leave out a typical `very' (`hen') to make the
> comparison nicer):
>
> a) Na ge ren     he    cha.
>    that  person  drink tea
>        `that person drinks tea'.
>
>    Na ge he    cha de    ren     shi pengyou.
>    that  drink tea DE    person  COP friend
>        `That person who drinks tea is a friend'
>
> b) Na ge ren    mang.
>    that  person (is)busy
>        `That person is busy'
>
>    Na ge mang de ren     shi pengyou
>    that  busy DE person  COP friend
>        `That busy person is a friend.'
More accurately, "that person who is/was busy". The relative clause marked
by "de" is a predicative modifier, not an attributive one. If you said
"mang ren shi pengyou", it would mean "busy people are friends". I.e., the
"mang" is attributive -- it refers to all people who are busy. Or, with
the demonstrative, "na ge mang ren" means "that busy person", implying
that the person is typically busy.

In contrast, the relative clause "mang de ren" refers to people who happen
to be busy, but who aren't necessarily *typically* busy. "Na ge mang de
ren" would mean "that person who is [currently] busy".

I don't know how else to explain this except that it is somewhat like the
difference between attributive and predicative modifiers in classical
Greek.

>
> I'd like to know whether who think the analysis as relative clause of
> `he cha de' and `mang de' and others like `hao de' (good DE) in `hao
> de pengyou' (good friend(s)) or `hong de' (red) in `hong putaojiu'
> (red wine, the DE is eliminated) is justified.
In "hong putaojiu", the "hong" is an attributive modifier. Actually, it
might be even more "tightly-binding" than that -- basically the "hong" in
"hong putaojiu" has become almost like an indivisible, idiomatic phrase
that refers to a particular kind of wine, not just any wine that has a red
color. If you said "hong de putaojiu", you refer to some wine that has a
red color, but not necessarily the particular kind of wine referred to by
"hong putaojiu".

> I asked a person with mother tongue Mandarin about this.  Obviously,
> the categorisation is less obvious as it seems, since `hao' (good)
> seems to change its meaning if used attributively, preventing a clear
> classification is a relative clause from the syntax only point.
[snip]

Hmm... an example that comes to mind is "hao che" (good car) and "hao de
che" (a car which is good). The latter is not very often used, because it
means "a car which is (morally) good" -- not a very likely usage under
normal circumstances. The attributive construction "hao che" has a more
sensible meaning -- "the good car".

The distinctions aren't always clear, though. "Hao ren" (good person) is
usually understood to be the same as "hao de ren" (a person who is good).
Except that sometimes "hao ren" is used in stories as a single,
indivisible idiom meaning "the protagonist", in a similar way to "huai
ren" (bad person), which can be used as an idiom meaning "the antagonist".
The predicative forms "hao de ren" and "huai de ren" cannot be used in
this way. It's similar to English -- we sometimes use the phrase "the bad
guy" to refer to a particular antagonist in, say, a story, but the phrase
"the guy who is bad" sound weird if you try to use it in the same way.


T

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