Re: Jorden at MIT

From: Jed Rothwell (jedrothwell_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 09/13/04 

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 14:06:13 GMT

Louise Bremner writes:

> > But I doubt there are many more actual pairs that might come up in
normal
> > speech or a contemporary document (newspaper, novel, scientific paper).
>
> Yup--I suppose "Kisha no kisha wa kisha de kisha" is a little dated now.

That does not count. There is no ambiguity in it. It sounds odd, but none of
the "kisha" in that sentence might be mistaken for another, because, for
example, you cannot ride a reporter back to your office. It is like "would"
and "wood," homonyms that would never show up in the same position in a
sentence. Perhaps there are more homonyms in Japanese than English, because
there are fewer sounds and they borrowed from Chinese and glommed words
together. I would not know about that. However, in any language, homonyms
which might occupy the same since position are extremely rare, because they
confuse verbal communication.

The other day I heard a sentence with genuine ambiguity: "kami o kiru." That
could be hair or paper. I think a native speaker would resolve it by
specifying "kami no ke" for hair.

- Jed