Re: Quotation: Subject-Object tightly related in Japanese.

Ben Finney wrote:
Bart Mathias <mathias@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:


That "sentence-object-verb structure" part is wa-a-ay wrong. It
should be "subject-..."


I'd have to agree. The structure is a lot looser than implied by the
quote that started this thread. I'd be inclined to go so far as
"subject-...-verb", but the placement of the "oject" (and, indeed,
most other parts of the sentence) is very loose. The strong binding of
particles to part-of-speech allows the structure to be correspondingly
loose.


I'm dubious about the Japanese subject-object relationship being
more "intimate" than English's. I think, however, that one might be
able to argue that Japanese is more clearly S ---> NP VP than
English is. I've long suspected that English is more S --->
[[subject verb] (object)].

That is to say, in English we relate the subject to the verb
immediately, without waiting to find out what the object is, while
in Japanese one normally holds off relating the subject to the verb
until after the verb and object have been reduced to a single
semantic entity.


I'd say that in Japanese *everything* is strongly related to the verb
(that is, stronger than the subject-to-object relationship), via the
particles; but they all need to be set up in the sentence structure in
advance of the verb.

Hontou-deshou-ka, sore-wa?

I'd agree with you up to the first "verb" except changing "Japanese" to "human language" and dropping "strongly" (and then changing "verb" itself to "head of predicate"), but I don't think it's a difference worth debating.

Bart
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Many thanks and one more question about HANJI+E
    ... My understanding is that in modern Japanese you generally need ... topicalise, not so much the verb, as the entire sentence. ... more like a noun? ... what effect did the introduction of the Chinese ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: "G" Pronunciation: Is it hard word initialy or utterance initially?
    ... the Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered Japanese at a time when this ... Accent would be hard to work in. ... From the modern verb point of view, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Conjucation of "to be"
    ... A verb is just the main word in the predicate of a sentence, ... If one is going to classify things, ... > minor features in common with Japanese verbs, ... different way of conveying existence that doesn't use desu but that doesn't ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: QUERY: No transitive verb in Japanese?
    ... the verb and that being `done' to. ... this little book (written entirely by Japanese ... actually is an ADVERB! ... It is essentially so-defined in Japanese school grammar (国 ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Newbie stuff: I hope to learn
    ... I don't see a great problem with calling a Japanese adjective a "verb"; ... Seems to me the post-"-te" 'iru' is a verbal (that inflects) following an already inflected verb; "-tai" is a verbal that also inflects following a verb stem: which are suffixes, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)