Re: QUERY: No transitive verb in Japanese?

Dan Rempel wrote:
mirror wrote:

Hello,

I read in "All Romanized English-Japanese Dictionary,"
by Hyoojun Romaji Kai (Tuttle, 1973, ISBN: 0-8048-11180),
that there are no transitive verbs in Japanese by
definition, because the verb follows both that `doing'
the verb and that being `done' to.


I don't think transitivity has anything to do with word order.


Instead, this little book (written entirely by Japanese
authors -- obviously), says the thing Westerners call
the `object,' to which often is tacked an `o' (`wo'),
actually is an ADVERB! (CAPS and BANG mine) modifying
the verb thusly (in mine own words):
"Suzi sushi-ly eats."
(Suzi eats sushi == Suzi wa sushi o (wo) taberu).


Maybe I'm being Hughed here, but speaking very generally, a transitive
verb does something to an object in a manner optionally described by an
adverb. If Suzi is eating sushily, maybe it's ice cream she's actually
eating. No, then she'd be eating sushily and ice-creamily, but now it
could be popcorn. Hmm, don't think it's gonna work.

I don't know that saying a を tacked word is equivalent to an
English adverb is appropriate or not, but I think it can be
said that を word is modifying or explaining a 動詞 or vice
versa; a verb is explaining the を word. And then why does a
を word have to be an English equivalent of object? It seems
to me that, in English, the notion of subject and object is
important in grammar because, without the presence of 助詞s,
they have to be a subject or object syntactically or else you
have no clues as to what these words are doing in sentence. I
mean pairing up of a subject or object, and a verb is needed
syntactically in a English sentence while not necessarily
needed in Japanese.


--

dareka dareka@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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