Japanese Language

Darius Jahandarie

1:04 AM

Pretty quiet around these parts lately...

Anonymous

1:19 AM

Hehe, sorry, I haven't been around as much

Anonymous

I usually talk a lot . . . :-)

Darius Jahandarie

1:34 AM

Snails keeping you busy?

Runkeeper shows me a picture of a snail when I haven't run yet during a week, and I'm reminded of you and your snails.

3 to 5 business days

3:26 AM

Yet another non-JP-related thing

3

Q: Alternative ways of saying "...., right?"

What are some alternative ways of confirming a point, situation, etc. apart from saying “…, right?” at the end of a sentence to make it a question? (e.g. You are going tomorrow on the 11:30 flight, right?) What are some good similar ways to ask the same question (in a way that we are confirming ...

I'm wondering how common/uncommon are tag questions ending with "..., yes?" or "..., no?"

I think I've heard "..., yes?" spoken by eccentric fictional characters, like witches

I thought "..., no?" is quite common though, no?

awww, shit... I'm wondering if I've picked up bad habits from fiction

Anonymous

3:55 AM

@3to5businessdays Fairly common. Not everyone says it.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=32996021

Anonymous

Click to read through some examples

Anonymous

First, click , NO ?, and the examples will appear in the lower right. Then find where it says SAMPLE: 100 200 500 and click one of those to get a randomized sample

Anonymous

You'll see that not all of the examples in the corpus fit what we're talking about precisely, but there's still a fair number of them.

Anonymous

A fair amount of them are in the fiction subcorpus, but that's to be expected since informal speech is less common in edited nonfiction

Anonymous

3:59 AM

We can ignore the fiction subcorpus and restrict our search to the 85-million word spoken subcorpus:

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=32996084

3 to 5 business days

Noice

Do you think it sounds pretentious or showy?

Anonymous

The spoken subcorpus is generally spontaneous speech, but the source is from transcriptions of television and radio: transcripts of unscripted conversation on TV and radio programs like All Things Considered (NPR), Newshour (PBS), Good Morning America (ABC), Today Show (NBC), 60 Minutes (CBS), Hannity and Colmes (Fox), Jerry Springer (syndicated)

3 to 5 business days

or odd?

very uncommon. I've only heard non-English speaking people use statements like "You like it, no?" grammatically correct or not, it's at least not a common American English idiom, possible common in other English speaking countries. It sounds the opposite of pretentious, like a French exchange student with limited English knowledge. — stephenbayer Aug 1 at 19:17

Anonymous

Not odd. I don't typically notice when people say it.

Anonymous

4:02 AM

If I look through chat logs, I find hundreds of examples, and I can't remember ever seeing one and thinking "Gee, that's odd!"

Anonymous

Our impressions as native speakers can be biased if we don't take the time to consider corpus evidence

3 to 5 business days

, no? is grammatically correct English and makes perfect sense. It's just not a common construction and can sound a little pretentious or maybe old-timey to native English speakers. That said, it can also sound fine depending on who says it and how. I recommend avoiding it while you're learning. — sgroves Aug 1 at 18:04

Just I was swayed by these comments

Anonymous

And if we're called upon to describe any of the less common bits of the language, like this one, we'll probably give different impressions from intuition

Anonymous

The fact is, though, that it's not so uncommon that it sounds specifically like something a learner would say.

3 to 5 business days

Definitely

Anonymous

4:04 AM

I don't share the impression that it's pretentious or old-timey

3 to 5 business days

So I thought, maybe it's something only fictional characters say?

Maybe Sherlock Holmes

Anonymous

My impression is that it's informal and may be associated with a loan of ¿No? from Spanish

Anonymous

But it's definitely something native speakers say

Anonymous

Not all native speakers, of course.

Anonymous

If you did pick this up from fiction, I wouldn't worry about it :-) Although I wouldn't use it in formal situations or writing

3 to 5 business days

4:07 AM

Of course

Anonymous

It's not really a standard question tag. It's fine informally.

Anonymous

But I'm sure you had that impression already.

3 to 5 business days

What's a standard question tag though? You mean like "isn't it"?

Anonymous

Yes, there are a number of standard ways of forming tag questions by adding tags such as "isn't it?" to the end

3 to 5 business days

Ah ok

Anonymous

4:09 AM

They vary dialectally

Anonymous

I wrote some answers over on ELL today

Anonymous

One question over there has three close votes because people don't understand it

Anonymous

That makes me sad, since I understand it fine

Anonymous

I hate seeing questions closed for that sort of reason

3 to 5 business days

Eh?

Anonymous

4:16 AM

3

Q: "The closest I've come to V_ing"

The closest I've come to V_ing ... It's a relative construction for sure. But I wonder how to analyze it : Is it The closest I've come ____ to V_ing ... Or The closest I've come to ____ V_ing ... Edit: Now I think that this is not a relative construction. The clause "I've come ...

grammar

3 to 5 business days

Such as?

Anonymous

I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say. can you reword and clarify your question? — John Kraemer 23 hours ago

Anonymous

This comment is at +4!

Anonymous

They're asking whether it's a relative construction and if so where the gap is

3 to 5 business days

For one

It would be better if

Anonymous

4:18 AM

V-ing would be better than V-ing, and it would be better with an actual sentence as an example, and their grammar and punctuation is imperfect

3 to 5 business days

> (The closest I've come) to V_ing

> (The closest I've come to) V_ing

I mean at first glance, I couldn't see the difference between the two alternatives

(the way OP wrote it)

Anonymous

I guess I'm used to seeing the gap notation :-)

3 to 5 business days

or is it a common way to write it?

Anonymous

It's like that in grammar books.

Anonymous

Well, in linguisticky ones.

3 to 5 business days

4:20 AM

oh ok

Anonymous

I suppose I could edit the question

3 to 5 business days

It looked a bit like "fill in the blank" to me

Anonymous

I echoed the gap notation in my answer

Anonymous

It's like if I wrote in Japanese:

Anonymous

> １.　[　ボールを蹴った　]
> ２.　[　＿＿＿＿蹴った　]　ボール

Anonymous

4:23 AM

There's a gap in object position in the relative clause in 2

Anonymous

It's as though ボール was "pulled out"

Anonymous

Leaving behind a gap.

3 to 5 business days

Wait, isn't the brackets the main delimiter though?

OP's question is like 蹴った＿＿＿ボール

Anonymous

The OP's question contains a relative clause with a gap

Anonymous

> The closest [ ∅/that/*which I've come ___ to V-ing ]

Anonymous

4:26 AM

> [ I've come close to V-ing ]

3 to 5 business days

so wait, what does the underscore do?

Anonymous

Okay, so

3 to 5 business days

It seems like I misunderstood the gap

Anonymous

"I've come close"

Anonymous

"The closest [ I've come ___ ]"

Anonymous

4:28 AM

We pull out close (sort of--it's a little weird when relatives modify superlative phrases)

Anonymous

And it leaves behind a gap, meaning...

Anonymous

You can't put anything there.

3 to 5 business days

god damn it

Anonymous

And it's understood that the head that the relative modifies plays that semantic role

3 to 5 business days

For some reason, I mentally filled in the blank

Anonymous

4:29 AM

Simpler example:

3 to 5 business days

oh wait

Anonymous

(To escape some distracting bits of grammar that we don't need to cover right now)

3 to 5 business days

nope, I didn't

Anonymous

> I hit the ball.

Anonymous

> the ball [ I hit ___ ]

3 to 5 business days

4:30 AM

Oh

Anonymous

The relative clause is incomplete on its own. It's just [ I hit ___ ]

Anonymous

We understand that the head noun ball is filling in that gap semantically

3 to 5 business days

so it indicates where the bold part would be if it were an independent clause?

Anonymous

Yeah, that is basically it. Hit is transitive and (in this case) needs a direct object.

Anonymous

The direct object is that gap.

3 to 5 business days

4:31 AM

If I had read your answer, I wouldn't be this confused

Sorry~

Anonymous

It's as though the head noun is filling in that gap.

Anonymous

That is, we treat ball like it's in that gap.

Anonymous

Even though technically it's outside the relative construction.

Anonymous

Likewise, with 蹴った ボール, we understand that it's as though ボール is filling in for the を-role inside the relative clause

Anonymous

Even though technically, ボール is outside that relative clause, and 蹴った is modifying it

3 to 5 business days

4:33 AM

At first I misunderstood the gap to be the same as the []-symbol marking the relative clause

Anonymous

The [brackets] mark a constituent

Anonymous

That constituent may be a relative clause, or it may be something else

Anonymous

You can use them optionally to show structure in a sentence without having to draw a syntax tree

3 to 5 business days

yes that's what I meant

Anonymous

Syntax is fun! :-)

Anonymous

4:35 AM

In Japanese, relative clauses are sometimes more ambiguous since Japanese has no relative words and because lots of things can be omitted

Anonymous

So sometimes in Japanese you can't tell where the gap is--that is, you can't tell what role the head noun plays

3 to 5 business days

Yeah you just tack it on.

Anonymous

Sometimes if the head noun could play two roles, you can make it unambiguous simply by not omitting the noun phrase in the other role

Anonymous

Japanese, unlike English, has gapless relatives, where the head noun doesn't fit into ANY role

Anonymous

I have to go run to the store :-) AFK!

Anonymous

5:35 AM

I'm back! When I try to think of ×, I always think ばつ and can never remember ぺけ

Anonymous

That's another thing I should ask about―ばつ versus ぺけ!

Darius Jahandarie

I always use a fullwidth 'x' for it, because otherwise it screws up the alignment of my sentences

(And a full-width

'o' for ○).

/me is rereading "Toward a Unified Analysis of Passives in Japanese: A Cartographic Minimalist Approach"

I wish /me worked in here.

Anonymous

does too

Darius Jahandarie

5:52 AM

Aaah, this is such a nice paper.

For some reason I didn't write it down in my references list, but I remembered enough to find it again.

Anonymous

Hmm, I don't have it in my PDF pile, but I know I read it before

Anonymous

Ah, it was sitting in my download directory! I have to spend some more time organizing soon :-)

Darius Jahandarie

I haven't downloaded a lot of papers that I've read, which I know is going to suck when I try to find them later and they're gone.

Well, maybe I can just ask you for a copy, since you seem to have read a superset of what I've read. :)

Anonymous

The worst thing is having hundreds of PDFs with filenames like 110006389002.pdf

Darius Jahandarie

Yeah...

Interesting....
* hitobito-ni John-ga teki-da-to omow-are-tei-ru
John-ga hitobito-ni teki-da-to omow-are-tei-ru

For me, the latter definitely feels better, but the former doesn't feel wrong... sigh.

BTW, relativization of non-ga/wo sources has always been something I have been unable to internalize

My mind just /needs/ the relativized head to be case marked for other things like in English. Stupid mind...

Actually I'm fine with no-marked and de-marked sources as well.

ni-marked and kara-marked I fail.

Mmm, actually the temporal ni is fine, only the goal ni is a problem.

政治家が友達を紹介したレポーターが秘書を褒めた。 is definitely difficult for me. I know what it means after analysis but not intuitively. Very annoying.

3 to 5 business days

6:30 AM

I have tons of stuff bookmarked but never got around to reading

Anonymous

Somehow, if I'm online, I end up wanting to read the entire internet depth-first

Anonymous

But if I'm going through PDFs I've saved, I'm content to go through what I've got :-)

Anonymous

So saving them to disk and organizing them seems to result in me actually reading more of them

3 to 5 business days

> wanting to read the entire internet depth-first

What do you mean?

Anonymous

Depth-first search

Depth-first search (DFS) is an algorithm for traversing or searching tree or graph data structures. One starts at the root (selecting some arbitrary node as the root in the case of a graph) and explores as far as possible along each branch before backtracking. A version of depth-first search was investigated in the 19th century by French mathematician Charles Pierre Trémaux as a strategy for solving mazes. == Properties == The time and space analysis of DFS differs according to its application area. In theoretical computer science, DFS is typically used to traverse an entire graph, and takes time...

3 to 5 business days

6:32 AM

How does it apply to your reading habits?

Btw TIL まと version of 的

Before this I only knew the one with the てき reading

Anonymous

I find it helps to think of them as words (or morphemes) first and then think of how they are written

3 to 5 business days

how they are written?

Anonymous

Well, for me at least, you can organize them a couple ways

Anonymous

You can learn that 的 is テキ or まと

Anonymous

Or you can learn that まと is a word which is written 的 and テキ is a suffix which is written 的

Anonymous

6:36 AM

I find that I tend to be less confused when I think about them in the latter fashion :-)

3 to 5 business days

That makes sense

Since oftentimes the kanji is attached to the reading

Darius Jahandarie

6:54 AM

@snailboat Hmm. This paper does seem to discuss passivized ditransitive verbs, but not ditransitive verbs like 染める where the indirect object is attributive (?... I think that's the best word for it).

My judgements:
ｏ彼女が髪を緑に染めた。
ｏ髪が緑に染められた。
ｘ髪が彼女に緑に染められた。
Not sure...: 髪が彼女に染められた。

@Choko @非回答者この例文をどう思いますか？

推測：ｘ

Anonymous

7:26 AM

It's sad when you want to copy text from a PDF with 縦書き, but when you highlight it you get horizontal cross-sections . . .