Japanese Language

Darius Jahandarie

2:45 AM

Today I learned that legalese in Japanese is just as annoying as it is in English.

Anonymous

But there's a lot less of it by volume! ;-)

Anonymous

I wonder if legalese is annoying in every language.

Darius Jahandarie

law.e-gov.go.jp/htmldata/S23/S23HO131.html is what I was reading.

And honestly, it is probably better than English legalese. But still annoying.

Anonymous

Well, there's one problem―

Anonymous

I'm more familiar with English legalese! :-)

Darius Jahandarie

2:50 AM

Hehe.

Anonymous

So even if it's better, it's less familiar

Anonymous

At least for me.

Darius Jahandarie

I'm actually taking a Coursera course on surveillance law right now.

Which is quite good so far.

But reading legal statutes is not particularly fun.

Anonymous

Not really :-(

Anonymous

catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2009T08

Anonymous

2:51 AM

$150

Darius Jahandarie

Hmm!

I wonder why Google NGram Viewer doesn't support Japanese.

Given that they support Chinese.

For some reason my laptop doesn't have the ァ and ィ bullet codepoints used in 大辞林 in any font

So they just show as boxes for me.

㋑!

Anonymous

Ooh, I want those fancy circled kana

Anonymous

I always end up typing (イ)

Darius Jahandarie

At least I can read that :P

Anonymous

Oh, the circled イ you pasted just now doesn't render for you? :-(

Darius Jahandarie

3:00 AM

Yeah.

I've seen it before so I think it does on my desktop, but apparently I'm missing a relevant font on my laptop.

Anonymous

(ァ)　　(ィ)　　←　Does it look better when I put parens on little kana?

Anonymous

Than big kana, I mean.

Darius Jahandarie

I think it looks better on the big kana.

Anonymous

（ア）　（イ）

Darius Jahandarie

Though maybe the half-width version would look nice.

(ｱ)　(ｲ)

Though I guess they look even less like circles now.

Meh, no real opinion. :P

I don't have a good sense for typography in Japanese.

Anonymous

3:05 AM

I've been advised never to use hankaku kana

Anonymous

ﾊﾝｶｸ!

Darius Jahandarie

3:17 AM

I was reminded of japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/17865/…

Anonymous

Ooh, I forgot about that!

Anonymous

Thanks Anki, now I know that I completely forgot 淋漓, both the word and the kanji

Anonymous

The worst thing is when Anki tells you that if you get the card right, you won't see it for 8.4 years, but then you get it wrong :-(

Darius Jahandarie

4:12 AM

Don't worry, you had just forgotten it. If it showed it to you in 8.3 years you would have remembered and it wouldn't have been as effective!

I swear there's a syntactic difference between the perfect and progressive/habitual readings of いる

But I've seen nothing to actually support that

数学を勉強している (progressive)
[数学を勉強して]いる (perfect)
[二時間勉強して]いる (perfect)

Like that.

二時間勉強していた (past progressive)
[二時間勉強して]いた (past perfect)

Or in other words, it feels like in the progressive case, the arguments and adjuncts are modifying the entire V-teiru, while in the perfect case it feels like they are modifying the underlying verb directly.

I'm reluctant to write something like this in an answer because it's probably wrong given that I've never seen anything like that.

jkerian

@snailboat At least it doesn't crank it down to a total reset... usually 8.4 years goes down to 11 months or something

(well... "10 minutes", followed by 11 months)

Anonymous

6:39 AM

@DariusJahandarie By the way, I went back to "adnominal" in my latest answer :-)

Anonymous

I abandoned "attributive"!

Anonymous

I hope you're happy :-)

Anonymous

Drilling vocabulary hurts my brain. :-(

Anonymous

The latest word I forgot is 寡黙.

Anonymous

Sometimes in fiction people say things like 「許さない、絶対にだ！」 I think that だ is interesting

Anonymous

6:54 AM

It seems to be a stripped-down cleft

Anonymous

I think Martin would say that the だ is propredication

Anonymous

Basically, だ taking the place of a repeated 許さない

Anonymous

→ 1. Cleft analysis: 「許さない、（許さないのは） 絶対に だ！」　→　「許さない、 絶対に だ！」

Anonymous

→ 2. Propredication analysis: 「許さない、 絶対に 許さない！」　→　「許さない、 絶対に だ！」

Anonymous

Asterisks failed me so I inserted spaces :-(

Anonymous

7:01 AM

I don't know which one makes more sense.

Choko

7:20 AM

う～ん・・・上かな

Anonymous

Does it make sense to you that way?

Anonymous

I don't really know where the だ comes from :-)

Darius Jahandarie

@snailboat I noticed!

I'm ecstatic. I just threw a "snailboat used 'adnominal'" party. I guess I forgot to invite you.

For me, it's neither of those analyses.

Anonymous

7:36 AM

@DariusJahandarie What do you think it is?

Anonymous

Oskar Lindberg made me cite references. :-)

Flaw

＠snailboat I'm trying to use this answer to solve the cleft japanese.stackexchange.com/a/4626/542

Darius Jahandarie

Semantically it feels similar to a のだ, in the "stance setting" sense of it.

Anonymous

@Flaw According to Hiraiwa, it should be considered an actual cleft, not a pseudocleft

Anonymous

In Hiraiwa's analysis, clefts retain case particles but pseudoclefts do not

Anonymous

7:38 AM

@Flaw meijigakuin.ac.jp/~hiraiwa/PDF/Hiraiwa_HUMIT2001_Final.pdf

Darius Jahandarie

The bottom sentence doesn't have that feeling at all, and the top one does but I don't the underlying structure is an omitted cleft.

Anonymous

Thank you. Surely you will update your answer as well, later on. I'm sure you agree that what you wrote about "quoting" is applicable in this context as well, and I just think proper referencing is good practice. There's not always time, I know, and your answer is still great. — Oskar Lindberg 3 mins ago

Anonymous

Surely...

Darius Jahandarie

「絶対にだ」〜「絶対にしないのだ」 in terms of the closest full sentence which retains meaning I think. I'm really failing to figure out what the underlying structure is though.

@snailboat He mentioned elsewhere he isn't a native speaker of English. :-)

Anonymous

Do I really hafta put a big references section at the end of my answer? :-)

Anonymous

7:46 AM

I don't have references handy for everything I say

Anonymous

I could put them together...

Anonymous

Most of what's in the answer is well known, I think

Darius Jahandarie

I don't think references are necessary. I usually try to list one if something good comes to mind, but that's about it.

Providing citations for quotes is important IMO, but as far as I can tell you don't have any in that answer.

After more reflection I guess I submit to the cleft analysis.

Anonymous

I'm not convinced by the お居で answer

Anonymous

Martin says that お出で is the source of all three

Anonymous

7:51 AM

Isn't that what dictionaries say, too?

Darius Jahandarie

Yeah. I think it's お出で as well.

Or at least that would make a lot of sense, given that forms like 〜きなさい also exist.

I wonder why this answer is attracting new users.

Anonymous

Ah, it got Hot Network Questioned

Anonymous

> Viewed 201 times

Anonymous

I left a comment

Darius Jahandarie

Why has that been happening so much lately?

Did we make it onto the list of sites that are allowed to be hot network questioned or something?

Anonymous

7:57 AM

No, some months ago they changed how it works

Anonymous

They introduced a random component into the way they display the list, which means questions that make it onto the bottom of the list get some screen time and get the opportunity to be pushed higher up the list

Anonymous

That's why HNQ appears different each time you reload now

Anonymous

But I believe the basic formula is still the same

Darius Jahandarie

Hmm, I guess that would account for it.

It also makes sense that such a to-the-point title like 「What is the meaning of 座っておいで?」 would attract anyone who thinks they know they answer.

Off to bed, tata.

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