We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
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We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#2From a sequence modelling perspective it was common to train models for language translation (long before LLMs) on the assumption that, over a long text, the cursor in one document follows the cursor in another document. There seems to be a limited amount of variation between grammars of different languages [1] but one of those variations is that you can basically reverse the words in a sentence.
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#3> The Japanese mostly think like Yoda. They first establish some concepts and facts, like when you're pushing data to the stack of a scientific calculator, and finish it with the intended action.
Thanks, this actually explains a lot. Korean is like this too. I'm realizing that a lot of communication difficultly comes from my aging mother speaking more slowly with words coming out this way. I get impatient thinking 'what are you talking about? get to the point' and frustrated if it takes very long or if I'm already busy or in a rush. It's like watching a movie with no context and an extended set up--not great if you weren't expecting the pace.
It definitely does extend beyond sentence structure. There will be preamble that sets the stage and covers considered adjacent points, then finally get to the ask/point.
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#4"So, I'm in this hotel, right? And there's this shop across the street, yeah? And it's got this suit, man - and I'm, like, I really wanna try that on."
Order of information is mainly prescribed by formal rules of expression; language itself is amenable to its users' idiosyncratic preferences and priorities.
At least, English is.
Can anyone who knows Japanese comment on whether the reverse order is possible / plausible there?
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#5"So, I'm in this hotel, right? And there's this shop across the street, yeah? And it's got this suit , man - and I'm, like, I really wanna try that on." Order of information is mainly prescribed by formal rules of expression; language itself is amenable to its users' idiosyncratic preferences and priorities. At least, English is. Can anyone who knows Japanese comment on whether the reverse order is possible / plausib…
Somewhat possible but not particularly plausible.
Japanese is a SOV language, so the verb generally goes at the end. You couldn't move that all the way to the front. The "subject" can be implicit and Japanese also distinguishes between the overall topic, marked with 'wa', and the actual subject (i.e., the agent that does something).
There's a fairly neutral order for many other parts of the sentence components. You can shuffle them around a bit, but it ends up changing the emphasis. As a rough analogy, you normally put size adjectives before colours: "I caught the big red balloon." Inverting this either sounds wrong or puts emphasis on the other adjective: "I caught the red big balloon" suggests that "big balloons" are a distinct category known to the speaker.
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#6"So, I'm in this hotel, right? And there's this shop across the street, yeah? And it's got this suit , man - and I'm, like, I really wanna try that on." Order of information is mainly prescribed by formal rules of expression; language itself is amenable to its users' idiosyncratic preferences and priorities. At least, English is. Can anyone who knows Japanese comment on whether the reverse order is possible / plausib…
I enjoy the mental imagine of this live translation widget making every Japanese person sound like Luis from Ant-Man.
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#7> The Japanese mostly think like Yoda. They first establish some concepts and facts, like when you're pushing data to the stack of a scientific calculator, and finish it with the intended action. Thanks, this actually explains a lot. Korean is like this too. I'm realizing that a lot of communication difficultly comes from my aging mother speaking more slowly with words coming out this way. I get impatient thinking 'w…
That style is not restricted to Asian speakers. Reading (a translation of) Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" with its deep recursive layers of introducing a topic and then giving the backstory thereof - the firing squad from the first paragraph gets explained a hundred or so pages later - I immediately recognized my wife's normal pattern of discourse. I then congratulated her on having a Nobel prize winning speaking style :-)
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#8Every time that image goes viral, it's fun to see how many people in the comments are surprised by this. You're the lucky 10,000!
"Why is Japanese like this" Not just Japanese! Subject-Object-Verb is the most common word order by number of languages and by number of language families. (Though going by number of speakers, I would guess Subject-Verb-Object might win... European, Chinese, Arabic are all SVO)
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#9I'll be honest, y'know the hotel, the shop across the street has a suit I wanna try on.
Re: We're Waiting for the End of the Sentence
#10> The Japanese mostly think like Yoda. They first establish some concepts and facts, like when you're pushing data to the stack of a scientific calculator, and finish it with the intended action. Thanks, this actually explains a lot. Korean is like this too. I'm realizing that a lot of communication difficultly comes from my aging mother speaking more slowly with words coming out this way. I get impatient thinking 'w…
I often wonder how this changes the way tension is built during spoken dialogue. Are there minor moments of suspense when someone lists a bunch of names and the listener waits to hear what verb is happening to them?