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The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

8020japanese.com

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Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#51

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

iamnotlarry wrote: post #41
chc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is overstating the regularity of Japanese a bit. For example, what is the past tense of "kuru"? What is the present tense of "datta"?

Yes. It is overstating Japanese regularity a very little bit. And understating the irregularity of English an enormous amount.

My Japanese's pretty rusty, so corrections welcome.

IMO you're not "overstating Japanese [verb][0] regularity a very little bit", but severely overstating it. The ichi-dan / go-dan verbs are indeed quite regular, and though there are irregular verbs like the grandparent post's example, IIRC there aren't actually that many (three?). However, that's not the only "axis" one could conjugate Japanese verbs. The complicated stuff are the transitive / intransitive forms, and the compound verbs. While some rules apply, they are more like the "I before E, except after C" English spelling rule.

It would be akin to saying that there are only three verb tenses in English: past, present, and future; simple, right? While it's technically not wrong, it's glossing over the progressive, perfect, and subjunctive forms (maybe there are more, don't remember), and their combinations.

[0] Hopefully from context it's clear we're only talking about grammar pertaining to Japanese verbs, and not Japanese in general. Japanese grammar has plenty of quirks, like how some colors are adjectives (red: akai, blue: aoi) but others are nouns (green: midori, purple: murasaki), or how loan words are usually written in katakana, but tobacco is not, etc.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#52

Post by dcw303 »

irq11 wrote: post #37
iamnotlarry wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You mean there's a ternary operator? I bring this up to illustrate that the metaphor isn't perfect, but it has some legs. I meant that BNF diagrams would be easier to create and understand for Japanese than for English. You are right that there are more forms for saying 'if'. Then again, I've seen programmers who spell 'if' 'f-o-r'.

No, I mean that there are at least a half a dozen different ways to express "if", and they all have specific semantic uses. It is way, way more complicated than syntax.

Agreed. This [0] and the subsequent lessons go onto explain that if clauses change depending on whether something is a fact, whether it is an invitation, whether it is volitional, etc.

I've been studying Japanese for years and I am at a basic intermediate level. I still find grammar hard to read, and even harder to produce naturally. I may just be particularly thick but I think saying "you can master Japanese grammar in a matter of weeks" is pretty misleading.

[0] http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/japanese-conditional...

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#53

Post by glandium »

Grue3 wrote: post #42
iamnotlarry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Japanese, you learn a handful of rules to conjugate a verb. Then those rules always apply with no exceptions. In English, there are not set rules. Every case is special. What is the past tense form of 'shake'? 'see'? 'walk'? 'sleep'? 'eat'? 'speak'? 'sit'? 'seek'? 'work'? There are no rules. You basically have to memorize every word and all the possible ways it can morph. English possessive: 's or s' or ' or s, d…

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'…

You're somehow comparing 3 verb conjugations in English vs. 186 for "kuru". Well, I hate to break it to you, but there aren't 186 conjugations for "kuru". There are, exactly, 6. 9 if you count the formal/archaic forms[1]. There may be 186 forms you can build with auxiliaries, but then, you'd have to compare to all the variants you can have in english with may, can, shall, etc.

1. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E8%A1%8C%E5%A4%89%E6...

Edit:

> Past tense, isn't that the same as conjugations? Also your rules don't really work. "tanoshii" => "tanoshiideshita"? Pretty sure that's not a word. The correct past tense is "tanoshikatta [desu]".

'tanishiideshita' is the kind of mistake you make when you're not taught that, in japanese, adjectives conjugate. Sadly, a lot of material glosses over that fact.

Similarly, most material for non-natives like to talk about the -masu form, then describe things as "-masu form without masu" (sigh).

Cumulating "knowledge" from such material, you end up with simplified rules like in GP, which work in some cases, but don't in many others.

Then when you dive more into the language, you either encounter new forms and consider them as such, and are crushed under the sheer number of forms, or have to basically start over, deconstruct what you learned and realize that, in fact, it's all much simpler and structured than what you thought, and what made it all more complex is all the learning material for beginners.

In some ways, it's like maths.

Coming back to the 186 forms for "kuru", I'm sure you only end up with that because of that same learning material "limitations". So you probably end up counting "konai", "konakatta", "konakute", "konakereba", and many other forms as forms of "kuru", when, in fact, they are one form of "kuru" with variants of "nai".

The same material will e.g. also tell you about "-kunai" for the negative form of "-i adjectives", but fail to mention that it's actually "-ku+nai", which explains why you will find forms like "-ku ha nai" or "-ku mo nai". I've never seen those explained in textbooks, but that I'm sure it's not pretty.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#54

Post by klodolph »

greenhatman wrote: post #28
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…

I like that you can add 'sen' at the end of a sentence to make it negative, or 'ka' to make it a question.

"Ka" at the end turns a sentence into a question, yes. You get a yes/no question, or you can swap in an interrogative pronoun if you like. This is ignoring pragmatics.

"Sen"... no. The closest is that present-tense polite (teineigo) forms of verbs change from -masu to -masen to make them negative. However, that's basically the only case that rule works. You also often end up changing the rest of the sentence, just like in English or other languages. For example, in English, indefinite pronouns will generally change when you negate, as the negative of "somebody is here" is "nobody is here", not "somebody is not here". And of course, being a natural language, it's full of exceptions (like how "everyone" doesn't follow the pattern of "everything", "every time", etc.)

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#55

Post by vorg »

iamnotlarry wrote: post #12

Remember those English diagramming classes everyone hated? I'm not very familiar with the education system in Japan, but I doubt they have diagramming classes. In Japanese, the diagramming is built into the language. You tag the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. Everything gets markup. Which part of the sentence is the direct object? Uh... the part with the direct object tag hanging off it? Correc…

> the idea that a natural language could actually be designed was a shock to me

Perhaps the Japanese grammar was designed by a small group of individuals, maybe even one individual, a long time ago, and promoted officially by the Japanese Emperor of the time. Many writing systems have been designed from scratch in the past. Many spoken languages have risen from regional dialect to imperial language, and at least one language, Israeli, was brought to life after being dead as a spoken language for centuries. No-one's ever found a definitive link between Japanese and any other language. Perhaps at some time, the Japanese grammar was designed from scratch, perhaps using a mixture of vocabulary from many other nearby languages existing at that time, and promulgated to become the language of all Japan.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#56

Post by irq11 »

dcw303 wrote: post #52
irq11 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean that there are at least a half a dozen different ways to express "if", and they all have specific semantic uses. It is way, way more complicated than syntax.

Agreed. This [0] and the subsequent lessons go onto explain that if clauses change depending on whether something is a fact, whether it is an invitation, whether it is volitional, etc. I've been studying Japanese for years and I am at a basic intermediate level. I still find grammar hard to read, and even harder to produce naturally. I may just be particularly thick but I think saying "you can master Japanese grammar…

Yeah, anyone who suggests that is either exaggerating, or doesn't know as much as they think they do.

Japanese grammar is simpler than English in some ways, harder in others. Overall though, it's really, really hard.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#57

Post by dcw303 »

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…

5 or 6 grammar points can go a long way? If it's that few then I guess they must be the formal forms. So you'll need at least another 5 or 6 to understand the casual forms that you would use with friends or when you're the sempai in the situation. Want to talk to kids or young adults? Better learn another 5 or 6 forms of manga styled grammar slang. And if you interact with sales clerks, listen to train announcements or want to hear other official announcements, they're going to speak keigo, so there's another "5 or 6" forms to learn.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#58

Post by fenomas »

panorama wrote: post #38
sdrothrock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can drop the particles (including pronouns) Sure. "piza wo taberu?" can be "piza taberu?" and that's fine, even normal. > (including pronouns) This is different and I think there are a few misconceptions bundled up in this assumption. 1. Particles don't exist on their own; they're permanently linked to the word that precedes them; if you've ever studied a Romance language, you can think of them as a way of declin…

Thanks. Sorry for the confusion; I have a decent understanding of when pronouns can be dropped, but my question was moreso about when particles can be dropped. For instance, from the linked article, this sentence: Tarō wa Noriko wo toshokan de mimashita. In casual spoken Japanese, can any of these particles (wa, wo, de) be dropped?

None in that case. I don't know of any general rules for when particles can be dropped, but sitting here thinking of examples, it's usually done for simple, direct sentences where the particle would be tying together two words whose relationship is already obvious:

> eiga miru?

> ano hon, suki?

> ame futte kita.

> okaasan iru?

And so on. But I don't think that's a rule you can work backwards from, it just describes all the cases that occur to me.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#59

Post by klodolph »

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 name for what you're talking about is "morphological typology". Languages occupy a spectrum from analytic (words stay the same) to synthetic (words change). English is usually categorized as analytic, since we only have a few ways to change words: plural -s, past tense -ed, etc., and English has been getting more analytic over time. Other European languages are more synthetic (fusional), like French, German, Spanish, etc. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian are very synthetic (agglutinative). Chinese (all varieties) is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's much more analytic than English.

Re: The Logic Behind Japanese Sentence Structure

#60

Post by klodolph »

laurieg wrote: post #46
iamnotlarry wrote: post #12

Remember those English diagramming classes everyone hated? I'm not very familiar with the education system in Japan, but I doubt they have diagramming classes. In Japanese, the diagramming is built into the language. You tag the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. Everything gets markup. Which part of the sentence is the direct object? Uh... the part with the direct object tag hanging off it? Correc…

I think you're probably falling into a common trap: There are plenty of exceptions, you just don't know them yet. For sure, Japanese verbs are more regular than English verbs. But most materials written about Japanese are aimed squarely at beginners. They naturally skip over any foibles for pedagogical reasons. There isn't all that much written (in English) about tricky sentences, syntactic ambiguity and similar mist…

There's a theory that humans have a certain "complexity budget" for languages. People will add things to simple languages, and forget things from complex languages, to arrive at some sort of equilibrium. Language complexity is a bit of a touchy subject though.

By comparison, Japanese might have simpler syntax and phonology than English, but higher orthographic and morphological complexity (and English is already orthographically complex).

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