Japanese Language

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jlptn1

12:15 AM

i'm still reading the same book from the last time i came here, which was probably two months ago :(

Anonymous

Oh, hey, welcome back @jlptn1!

jlptn1

i only read about once a week for a couple hours though..

hey @snailboat :)

Anonymous

@jlptn1 Activity on Japanese.SE has been picking up lately!

Anonymous

1089

Japanese Language – japanese.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language.

Currently in public beta.

jlptn1

oh cool

glad to hear it

was just at CurryHouse and Mitsuwa and wondered how yourself and this SE was doing

Anonymous

12:35 AM

Oh, yay

Anonymous

There's questions and answers and stuff. :-)

Money Oriented Programmer

4:30 AM

What is the japanese translation for the following ?

Money isn't everything but everything needs money.

2 hours later…

Chocolate

6:25 AM

@DanHulme え。poshなの・・・へぇ

Chocolate

6:38 AM

@MoneyOrientedProgrammer Literally... お金は全てではないが、全てにお金は必要だ。but i think it's a bit unnatural... so

お金は全てではない。しかし何をするにもお金は必要だ。

maybe?

金は全てではないが、何をするにも金は必要だ。←金 instead of お金

お金 sounds more casual than 金

(The 金 is read as kane, by the way. if you read it "kin", it'd mean "gold", not "money")

saintyoda.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/kata-nenekku

[money is not everything but everything needs money]
[金がすべてがすべてのお金が必要ではない]

⇑　I think this is a machine translation

OMG

[友人は、戦場で死ぬ会うの前線で死ぬことをお勧め]
[better to die on the front lines then seeing a friend die on the battlefield]

「死ぬことをお勧め」て・・・おい

@snailboat I really like your answer, and I think Tim is 鋭い, too...

Chocolate

7:03 AM

and now I'm reading this thread for the first time japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/2864/…

Money Oriented Programmer

@Chocolate Thanks !

Chocolate

@MoneyOrientedProgrammer Anytime~

Money Oriented Programmer

@Chocolate Anyway ~

2 hours later…

Tim

9:03 AM

@Chocolate Thank you Chocolate. I like Sanilboat's answer too. I am hoping we get some more comment because I don't see how we can take this further.

BTW: I see you were a big help to Snailboat getting her ideas sorted.

It is good to see one's old question getting aired again.

Feels like it was more justifed as a question.

1 hour later…

Dan Hulme

10:37 AM

urk

trying to explain things on Lang-8 is making me realise how unnecessarily complicated English is

Anonymous

I rely on reference grammars for a lot of analysis

Dan Hulme

in this case: unlike ＡのＢのＣ, A's B's C usually sounds unnatural, but the C of A's B doesn't

Anonymous

> 1. my friend's mom's dog
> 2. ?the dog of my friend's mom

Dan Hulme

yeah, it's one of those bizarre things

different rules in different cases

Anonymous

What's your example?

Dan Hulme

10:42 AM

"the dog of my friend's mum" sounds like a French exercise

this example isn't quite what I said: it's "today's my goal", as in "my goal for today" or "my goal today"

"what my goal is today" is probably the best in context

if in doubt, rewrite it completely :-)

Anonymous

11:03 AM

Ah, that's not a problem with stacked genitives (which as you can see in my example are grammatical), but with trying to determine a pronoun (cf. *his my but his mom's). You can use my as a determiner in my goal, but then the determiner slot is used up. You can't add a genitive NP determiner to it. On the other hand, since an entire genitive NP can function as determiner, ((((my) friend)'s mom's) dog is okay.

Dan Hulme

right, but it also doesn't work the other way around

my today's goal

whereas my brother's goal is perfectly fine

I think really it's just "my today" that's the problem really

Anonymous

Because today is a deictic temporal pronoun.

Dan Hulme

but thinking about it made me think about the A's B's C thing, which as you say is fine in principle, but doesn't always work

Anonymous

So you run into the same problem. Today is my birthday but not *The today is my birthday. (It's not traditionally analyzed as a pronoun, but the inability to take determiners is a strong argument; see CGEL p.429)

Anonymous

Calling today a pronoun is also semantically appropriate. It generally has deictic reference, like I or you.

Dan Hulme

11:13 AM

yes, that's a nice touch

Anonymous

There really aren't many exceptions that can't be systematically explained. One of the sticking points in any analysis is the attributive use of genitive NPs, typically with reference to human beings:

Anonymous

> an old people's home

Anonymous

Although you can make some generalizations, there are a few cases where you just have to memorize which attributive genitives are possible

Anonymous

A fine summer's day, but probably not ?a fine spring's day

Anonymous

Your examples, though, are systematic

Anonymous

11:16 AM

@jkerian I noticed Martin explicitly addresses the question of 分かる versus 分かっている in his section on lexical aspect, and he likens it to できる versus できている

Anonymous

> ...stative verbs ... never take the ～ている conversions—*あっている 'is existing' and *いっている 'is needing' are ungrammatical, and できている is possible only as the resultative ('is achieved/formed') of the punctual verb できる 'achieved/forms', not as 'is being able' from the stative. Similarly, 分かっている 'has achieved understanding = understands' is to be distinguished from 分かる = 理解できる 'can understand = understands'.

Anonymous

(Martin 1975, p.275)