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The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

8020japanese.com

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Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#131

Post by shiro »

blipmusic wrote: post #112
shiro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your third example isn't valid. It needs a bit of tweak. Tarou ga Noriko wo mita toshokan The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic. But in a phrase to explain a noun, we use "ga" exclusively. Your main point still holds, in a sense that "Tarou ga Noriko wo mita" is a valid sentence. But to be precise, "mita" in those two sentences are different conjugated forms; it just happens that two conjugated forms are…

> The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic Forgive me for saying this, since you seem to be a native speaker, but don't you mean that they both introduce the subject , not topic (using 'topic' as a linguistic term)? "Wa" would be the topicalising subject marker, denoting known information: Tanaka wa nihon ni itta. Tanaka went to Japan. -> As for Tanaka, he went to Japan. Tanaka = known information (i.e. Tana…

My knowledge of Japanese grammar is in Japanese, so I'm not certain about the English term of 主語, to be honest. We use the same term to describe 'subject' in English grammar. I used 'topic' just because the original article used it.

Your explanation of 'ga'/'wa' is spot on as far as I can understand as a layman of native speaker with standard Japanese grammar education in Japan but no advanced linguistic degree.

I'd say that, because 'wa' emphasizes the introduced subject as the center of interest, it isn't used in the subordinate clause.

Tanaka ga nihon ni itta hi. (The day Tanaka went to Japan) ; ok - the interest is on 'hi'

Tanaka wa nihon ni itta hi. ; invalid

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#132

Post by mhink »

laurieg wrote: post #48
Grue3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting that there are only 3 (three) verb conjugations in English, of which two are almost always the same. Only a finite number of verbs have irregular conjugations, so you just learn them along with vocabulary. In Japanese, the number of possible conjugations of all irregular verbs (copula, "suru", "kuru") is probably larger than the number of English irregular verbs that are commonly used. In fact, let'…

We have counters in English too! Tons of words are uncountable, like water, bread, and so on. A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...) We even have lots of words that are both countable and uncountable. "I ate some tomato" and "I ate some tomatoes" has quite different meaning. Overall I think all languages have their foibles, and trying to hold one widely used…

> A slice of bread, a loaf of bread, a bread roll (Hey, why did that one come after the 'bread'...)

This doesn't seem that unusual to me, all things considered. "Bread", as a word, is more of a substance-noun than a discrete object-noun.

Moreover, "slice" and "loaf" don't strike me as words which give meaning to the phrases "slice of bread" or "loaf of bread"- in fact, it's the other way around. For instance, "slice" is the primary noun, and "bread" is just meant to distinguish it from other "slices" (e.g. "slice of pizza").

So, when I say "Pass me two slices of pizza", I'm really saying "Pass me two 'slice-of-pizza's", rather than "Pass me 'two-slices' of pizza".

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#133

Post by mikekchar »

glandium wrote: post #126
mikekchar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem beginning Japanese learners often face is that they are taught polite form before plain form. Polite form is a natural extension of plain form, but if you start with that, it's actually quite mind bending to back track to plain form. The secret is to abandon polite form entirely until you are relatively fluent with plain form and then add polite form back in. For example, "tanoshii" is present/future…

> The wrong bit is that "tanoshikunai desu" should really be "tanoshiku arimasen". While it should technically be -ku arimasen, it's actually rarely used, and -kunai desu is more "mainstream". > Past tense is "suki datta". To make it polite "suki deshita". Negation is "suki de wa nai" (seriously, romaji makes me cringe...). Polite negation is "suki de wa arimasen" Trivia: all these forms are really variations of "suk…

Thank you for that. That makes a lot more sense. I admit my source for the combining was 言葉マン on NHK and I may have misunderstood some things :-).

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#134

Post by striking »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #82
iamnotlarry wrote: post #8

I learned Japanese very much the same way I learn programming languages and found it to be very easy to learn spoken Japanese. As far as languages go, Japanese is structured a lot like a programming language. If you learn five or six "bunpo" or grammar rules, you can go a very long ways. Then, to improve, just add rules to your mastery. When I first learn any programming language I start with basics: variable binding…

If you're interested in learning to read Japanese, you should give it a shot. It's intimidating but pretty do-able. Set yourself up with flash cards (I suggest AnkiDroid) and you can be pretty good at reading hiragana and katakana within a week. Then, study kanji flash cards for an hour a day and you'll know all the common kanji before you know it. Try to memorize 10-25 kanji per day and you can learn all the jōyō ka…

What AnkiDroid cards do you use?

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#135

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

striking wrote: post #134
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in learning to read Japanese, you should give it a shot. It's intimidating but pretty do-able. Set yourself up with flash cards (I suggest AnkiDroid) and you can be pretty good at reading hiragana and katakana within a week. Then, study kanji flash cards for an hour a day and you'll know all the common kanji before you know it. Try to memorize 10-25 kanji per day and you can learn all the jōyō ka…

What AnkiDroid cards do you use?

Kana (hiragana and katakana): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1632090287

Kanji: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1862058740

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#137

Post by akssri »

Arnavion wrote: post #123
akssri wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed the सम्बन्ध; it's not a कारक technically. The canonical defn. of कारक is that which relates a noun to the verb. सम्बन्ध relates relations between nouns (you can't have sentences with only a verb and a noun in genitive).

:shrug: It's part of the list of kaarak and is taught as such.

Shrug all you want, but it most certainly is not and neither will it ever be. The definitions have been laid out in the Ashtadhyayi ~2000 years back.

It's not my concern if certain folk have no education in Panini, and are arrogant enough to ignore his work.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#138

Post by gdilla »

whym wrote: post #19

This article does a great job at presenting a gist of the Japanese sentence structure. Nevertheless, it makes me want to point out that it's not the whole story. If you take into account topics such as modality and conjugation, some of the information you add to a verb is placed after the verb and cannot be freely reordered. Japanese verbs are "greater" than English verbs in the sense that you conjugate/suffixate a v…

The conjugation of japanese verbs are non negotiable - it has to be there for you to make any sense, and I don't think OP was claiming that you can move(?) how a verb is conjucated - just that the subject and object order doesn't matter (which is correct). The tense of the verb or conjucation of the verb has nothing to do with that.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#139

Post by glandium »

kazinator wrote: post #94

Hey all, on a topic related to this: here is another way to get some feeling for the different sentence structure. I recently finished making English subs for a 45 minute Japanese rock concert video from the 1980's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNqfX9nm-No Here I introduce a concept in subtitling whereby a subtitle template with dashed ("------") blanks appears for an entire English sentence, and the blanks conver…

"This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." :(

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#140

Post by blipmusic »

shiro wrote: post #131
blipmusic wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The particle "ga" and "wa" both introduce a topic Forgive me for saying this, since you seem to be a native speaker, but don't you mean that they both introduce the subject , not topic (using 'topic' as a linguistic term)? "Wa" would be the topicalising subject marker, denoting known information: Tanaka wa nihon ni itta. Tanaka went to Japan. -> As for Tanaka, he went to Japan. Tanaka = known information (i.e. Tana…

My knowledge of Japanese grammar is in Japanese, so I'm not certain about the English term of 主語, to be honest. We use the same term to describe 'subject' in English grammar. I used 'topic' just because the original article used it. Your explanation of 'ga'/'wa' is spot on as far as I can understand as a layman of native speaker with standard Japanese grammar education in Japan but no advanced linguistic degree. I'd…

Thanks for your reply. I believe 主語 covers both subject and topic. Since an English sentence such as "John loves Mary." can be understood as e.g. "It is John (not James) who loves Mary." or "John loves Mary (not Lisa)", it might have several formal representations in Japanese via e.g. the use of wa/ga.

Also, see user gizmo686's excellent explanation for one approach below.

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