Re: QUERY: No transitive verb in Japanese?

Dan Rempel wrote:
dareka wrote:

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.


I think I sort of understand what you mean by this, but not well enough
to really comment on it. Do you mean that because words are marked with
particles in Japanese you always know what function they have, even if
the sentence leaves out a predicate?

I would say that because words are marked with particles you
have relatively more clues about what they mean on their own
than words without particles. I mean (semantical) subject or
object without particle has to have a more clear role in
relation to the verb syntactically like "subject" or "object"
of sentence or clause.

If so, I'd say the functions still
correspond to things like subject, object, source, (or agent, patient,
etc. if you prefer). Don't mind being proven wrong, though: I'm getting
fairly used to it around here.

Of course their semantical functions are supposed to have to
be obvious and distinguishable if the meaning of their
sentence or phrase are supposed to be rational. But think of a
phrase like 猫が好き. Is this 猫が a subject or object?
Whether it is a subject or object, both がs come from
apparently same が but take different meanings by context.
Same thing can be said to 猫は好き and 猫も好き as well. So I
think defining が or は as subject or object marker of a
sentence or clause is inconvenient and inappropriate for
Japanese grammar.

--

dareka dareka@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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