ELL's Cabin

Anonymous

21:00

Yes, of is essentially meaningless.

Anonymous

It leaves the semantic relationship unspecified.

Anonymous

Likewise, attributive nouns can have almost any semantic relationship that seems reasonable in context. (What seems reasonable may vary from speaker to speaker.)

Damkerng T.

nods -- Sometimes the meanings of these variations are not quite the same, but highly related.

Anonymous

Note that Japanese Y-no X corresponds to all three of X of Y, Y's X, and Y X, among other constructions.

Damkerng T.

Like, work of art, art work, or even artwork.

Catija

21:02

Well, crud, I just accidentally proofread/corrected something. I just needed to make it better. :(

Damkerng T.

@Catija You can undo it.

Catija

@DamkerngT. But then it will still be wrong. :(

Anonymous

Since my comment about genitives got starred, I edited it to make it less misleading out of context.

Damkerng T.

@Catija But you can edit it again, if you like. :D

@snailboat Yay!

Catija

@DamkerngT. Not in a comment. I can only delete it.

Damkerng T.

21:05

Oh, I see. I left a lot of my typos in comments around. -- sad

@snailboat A heavy-duty no!

Anonymous

If my comment is the most recent and I want to edit it past the 5-minute limit, I just post a new one and delete the old one :-)

Anonymous

Although on Japanese.SE, I can edit any comment at any time.

Catija

I don't want to edit it, I just used a comment to fix that guy's paragraph because it was pretty bad.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Japanese no basically marks something as a premodifier of the following noun phrase.

Anonymous

It follows nouns directly, and can also follows most particles (in which case it changes the relationship from "premodifier of the following predicator" to "premodifier of the following noun phrase")

Anonymous

21:08

The semantic relationship is all but unspecified.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I usually cheat by reading it as 's.

Anonymous

Yeah, that's a useful way to think about it as a learner. At least at first.

Anonymous

Often 's is the best translation. But it isn't always. Sometimes the best translation is replacing it with nothing, for example.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

> 東京への道　[ Tōkyō-e ]-no michi　'the road to Tokyo'

Anonymous

21:10

You could mentally translate this as [ to Tokyo ]'s road, but that would be rather strange English :-)

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

Another cheat: 東京への道 --> Tokyo ot road

Anonymous

We use word order in English to indicate the relationship no indicates in this Japanese sentence.

Anonymous

We place the preposition phrase to Tokyo immediately after the word road.

Anonymous

And we understand road to Tokyo as a single thingy.

Anonymous

But in Japanese, postposition phrases like Tōkyō-e connect to the predicator of the clause (basically, the verb) unless you mark them with -no.

Anonymous

21:14

And the postposition phrase doesn't necessarily come directly before the head noun.

Anonymous

> 故郷への長い道　[ furusato-e ]-no nagai michi　'the long road home'

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Here, the postposition phrase 故郷へ (furusato-e 'home') connects to the following head noun 道 (michi 'road'), even though there's an intervening adjective.

Damkerng T.

Me cheater: 故郷への長い道 --> [home] ot [long] [road]

Anonymous

I thought ot was a typo the first time, but now I see you've typed it twice!

Anonymous

21:15

Is that supposed to represent the mirror image relationship?

Anonymous

To as a postposition is ot? :-)

Damkerng T.

Yes!

I'll blame it on if ... fi and case ... esac. :P

Anonymous

ot is an okay gloss for へ, but be careful―there aren't any postpositions in Japanese that line up cleanly with English prepositions

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I think you can go a long way in Japanese grammar by keeping track of "connects to following noun" or "connects to following verb" (if I can simplify a little :-)

Anonymous

21:19

So you can think of の as switching the type of connection!

Anonymous

In other words, a purely grammatical role.

Anonymous

It's very common that you can't assign any meaning whatsoever to の.

Anonymous

And that's what we expect of a semantically bleached function word like の or of.

Damkerng T.

We've got a similar problem with of in English too, I think.

nods

Anonymous

Yeah, that's my parallel with of. :-)

Damkerng T.

21:21

Based on my ot, I think fo can work sufficiently well for の. :P

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. To take the textbookiest example there is, 私のペン watashi-no pen 'my pen'

Anonymous

In your glossing scheme, it would be me-fo pen? :-)

Damkerng T.

Yes!

It works perfectly for me, because in Thai, I and me are the same word.

Anonymous

Well, they're at least clearly in alternation in English. We can call them two forms of the same word, if we like.

Damkerng T.

And my is usually translated into Thai as [of-me].

Anonymous

21:23

Like 私の!

Damkerng T.

Yes!

And my pen would be [pen-of-me]. :D

Anonymous

Can you say [pen-me]?

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes, we can!

Anonymous

I read that the possession marker in Thai can be left out.

Damkerng T.

It can be left out indeed!

Not sure if it's always the case.

I cannot think of a good exception, so I think in most of the cases we can drop it (the of).

Anonymous

21:26

You can leave out の sometimes in Japanese, but not most of the time.

Anonymous

①アメリカ合衆国の大統領 amerika-gasshūkoku=no daitōryō 'President of the United States of America'

Anonymous

②アメリカ合衆国大統領　 amerika-gasshūkoku daitōryō 　'The United States of America President'

Anonymous

In example ①, the two nouns are related grammatically by the genitive particle no, but in example ②, there's no explicit marker of their grammatical relationship. They're simply placed next to each other.

Anonymous

(I'm not sure 'The United States of America President' is cromulent English, but it was the best I could do :-)

Anonymous

The version without の is about 10 times more common.

Anonymous

21:33

How do you say The President of the United States of America in Thai?

Damkerng T.

It's like [president-UnitedStates-America] ประธานาธิบดีสหรัฐอเมริกา.

Anonymous

Is it possible to phrase it with [of]?

Damkerng T.

But sometimes we translate the of after President with another preposition(?), แห่ง, which sounds a little like a locative preposition.

Anonymous

Oh, I see!

Anonymous

I need to get in the habit of marking particle attachment with =

Damkerng T.

21:36

With the standard possessive of (ของ), it's possible too, but it wouldn't sound as good.

Anonymous

Earlier, I kept writing -no, but I think it would have been better if I'd written =no

Anonymous

It's a different kind of attachment than compounding (which I indicated with - in amerika-gasshūkoku)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ahh, I see

Damkerng T.

I think I may insert - between Thai words too when I gloss them in chat rooms.

[president-UnitedStates-America] ประธานาธิบดี-สหรัฐ-อเมริกา

Anonymous

Oh, that's fine. You have your own glossing style.

Anonymous

21:38

It's not like we all have to use the same symbols for the same things :-)

Damkerng T.

The - is not normally used in Thai text that way anyway. :D

Anonymous

Nor in Japanese.

Anonymous

I'm trying to follow a convention used by a linguist I respect very much

Damkerng T.

Ahh... may I know his or her name?

Anonymous

Heiko Narrog

Damkerng T.

21:39

Thanks!

Eh, Narrog?

Anonymous

German, I believe

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

German, but a professor at Tohoku University in Japan

Damkerng T.

Hehe, he's got a tash! :-)

Anonymous

I have his book, Modality in Japanese: The layered structure of the clause and hierarchies of functional categories

Damkerng T.

21:42

Eh, hmm... maybe that's another Heiko Narrog.

Anonymous

I didn't expect to find multiple Heiko Narrogs on Google Images!

Damkerng T.

Anonymous

I don't know who that is!

Anonymous

intcul.tohoku.ac.jp/research/staff/94.html

Damkerng T.

Apparently, that's Christian Lehmann, who posted Heiko Narrog u. Bernd Heine (Hgg.): The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization on ResearchGate. :D

So my misunderstanding!

Anonymous

21:45

Ah!

Damkerng T.

Anonymous

There you go!

Damkerng T.

Yay!

I found his video on YouTube ("Self and Subjectivity in Thought and Language"), but the volume is very low (low enough that I barely hear anything), so maybe later.

Transcript for