Re: experts, come in, please!

jwb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Ray <raymondaliasapollyon@xxxxxxxxxxxx> dixit:

[...]. Please examine the following sentence:


John-ga Bill-ga Mike-ni zibun/kare-zisin/zibun-zisin-no
koto-o hanasita to itta.


John-nom Bill-nom Mike-dat -gen
matter-acc told that said


"zibun" can refer to John or Bill. It is a long-distance reflexive in
that it can have an antecedent outside its own clause.


I can't cope with sentences like that with two がs. It took me
years to handle multiple をs.

I thought the 自分 (zibun) would refer to Bill only.

The specimen sounds sort of like something from the Tsujimura book I
mentioned a few days ago. (I just found out that she has an office in
IU's Goodbody Hall, where I spent my first eight years as a full-time
teacher!)

I believe native speakers (especially those of Japanese) will tell you
that the sentence is indeed ambiguous. I think it might be interesting
to run an empirical experiment and see what people's first reading is.
I would, like you, apparently, take it to be Bill at first glance,
unless context or possibly intonation suggested otherwise.

If I have ever been led down the garden path by such sentences, I never
found out. I don't think "such sentences" happen very much in real
life, even if you substitute more Japanese-sounding names for "John" et
al. (Maybe it's the exotic interference of those names that incline
NSoJ to accept such sentences in the first place?)

No longer "expert" enough to answer Ray's query, I only recall that
reflexives generally refer to subjects of non-lower clauses. I wonder
whether I kept my Tsujimura.

Bart
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: I need some help from native speakers of Japanese
    ... > I would like to know how you will express the following English ... (As I don't know Japanese, ... (meaning, "You think that he has gone? ... embedded clause, not to the matrix clause, therefore not to the matrix ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: I need some help from native speakers of Japanese
    ... In Chinese and Japanese, such phrases stay in situ, i.e. they don't ... This captures the ungrammaticality of the following sentence: ... the square brackets delimit the adverbial clause.) ... I want to know whether the situation of Japanese is like Chinese, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Death Panels Are Back
    ... BAR wrote: ... Clause in the bill. ... Palin points out clause, people raise hell. ... People find the clause and raise hell again. ...
    (rec.sport.golf)
  • Re: I need some help from native speakers of Japanese
    ... I would like to know how you will express the following English ... (As I don't know Japanese, ... "Kare ga itte shimatta nante anata wa doko desou omotta no ... embedded clause, not to the matrix clause, therefore not to the matrix ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Only text pointers are allowed in work tables
    ... Bill wrote: ... > When I try to add an ORDER BY clause to a SELECT with a UNION ALL ... > image columns. ... > a text, ntext, or image column in a work table. ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.tools)