Postby qrasy » Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:52 am
I don't really know Japanese verb grammatization, but 指使い can surely by changed into adjactive without using "的". Usually the "-teki" is used after a loaned Chinese word, making it "loaned with grammatization", but after that the compounding uses non-Chinese formula. I've never seen "Kanji"+"Kana tail"+"Kanji again" in single, suffixed VERB.
The "grammatized-loans" also exist in Vietnamese, where they have to use Chinese grammar in compounding some words.
One thing that many does not realize (of course, not including you): Kanji can be read very differently from Chinese readings. Non-infix languages can be written with Kanji+special script, despite the readings would be 99.9999999% different ("Cut" and "Burn" are also read similar to Chinese.) []
Usually when we have adjective in Japanese, there is a な ending. But I found in some strange adjectives it uses の. The head is seemingly noun.
Once, I thought that の had the same function as 的 or 之. I'm not quite sure now, but my attempt is 指使いの家稲妻物の新しく売り物、お買いやすく商い物が数々あります!
In the Japanese version of google you can see usage of Western loans more than original Japanese of Chinese loans.
Sorry, I typed to many 9's. I think there are not more than one billion of words.
[b]I was in canada for several years. Their cantonese is still tonal although in a slightly different tones than the hongkongers but that is normal considering when people migrate they will develop slightly different dialects.
May be the Canadian Youth Cantonese only exist in one city (if the reduction existed more than in 1 city, it would be very strange), and you stayed in another city so you didn't hear them.
The issue of whether tones developed because of Chinese may be hard to answer, however dismissing that tones can develop in an otherwise non-tonal language is an idea worthy of dismissal in itself. Actually, the Ru tone is an artifice of Chinese philology. They single out syllables with clipped endings but in all Chinese dialects which have Ru tones, they can be distributed amongst the other tones according to their tone contour. For example, Cantonese credited with 9 tones only has six tonemes. The loss of tonal distinction is does not arise when Cantonese is written with only six distinguishing tone markers.
The Ru tone readings of characters that are "lost" in Mandarin are distributed amongst the four tones, principly the two Ping tones, the Qu and Shang.
As we see with Sino-Viet, the associated Ru tones are in fact merged in to the tones associated with the Qu upper and lower tones. So it has six tonemes, rather than the artificial eight as you continually suggest.
This kind of "Ru"-register tones seemed to have merged in the early age of tonogenesis, confusing "Shang" register tones.
The Chinese tone changed, but strangely the "Shang" and "Qu" seems to reverse in Middle Chinese.
I'm not sure about what happened. But it seems that in new Sino-Vietnamese: Yang-Qu->Yang-Ru, Yin-Ru-> Yin-Qu (middle Chinese tone base)
As for whether the Ru tones really exists in Modern Viet, I'm quite sure. The rising tone seemed to change when it comes with stops. If I'm not wrong, the tone becomes like /51/ and is glottalized.
Then there is the rather debatable classification of tai languages into another family grouping (by some linguist) which has a numeral system which sounds so similar to chinese except for 0,1,2,5 if one only looks at the numeral system to determine the origins. The fact that the "1" of sound "neung" is borrowed can also be debatable, seeing as "11" of sound "sip it" is similar to chinese languages such as hakka or hoklo.
same goes for "21" which sounds like "yi sip it" instead of using "song sip neung". The theory that numerals cannot be borrowed is debatable seeing these anomalies in the tai language.
In fact only '0' and '1' sounded unlike Chinese. 2 is likely to be "song" 雙. 5 is "Haa", a strange reduction of "Ng-". 0 is not basic number, in many languages it exists as loan. In this case, Tai likely loans from Khmer.
"Neung" this word for '1' is strange, it's dissimilar to 單 or anything I know to have meaning related to '1', but in Zhuang language "deu" seemingly have to do with Hoklo.
It depends on how you look at the number of tones in cantonese (how you classify), it can be around 6 to 9. The same goes for vietnamese. I am not debating on the exact number of tones in vietnamese (6 or Cool but rather the gaining of tones from a non-tonal language to (6 or Cool is definitely an anomaly.
Gaining of tones like Chinese, i.e. the "Chinese tonogenesis", only appeared around China in the age around Han. The endings etc. were lost and become pitch contours. I don't know which language group started it, but their tone product is very similar to each other, it has 8 tones (of course, including 1 registers of "Ru"). Its very unlike African tonogenesis, which makes only 2 tones and these very very few tones may not hear like other group of tonal languages. Nowadays the tone reduce and reduce, but there are found 9~15-tonal languages, and I don't know how the languages get >8 tones.
Don't you find it strange that the northern vietnamese dialect has 6 tones whereby the southern vietnamese dialect has lost one tone ? We all know that northern vietnam is the original territory. Southern vietnam was only conquered from the "khmer or champa" speakers and with influence from the non-tonal languages just as mandarin was influenced from the altaic languages.
It is not strange. Tonal reduction is common everywhere. In Burmese you have 3 tones. Do you know that Hakka and Hoklo have less than 8 tones, despite the languages around them are tonal? (The languages around them even have 8-9(?) tones)
Some people here are confused as to the precise definition of tones rather than registers. For example, in english, if you ask a question 'where do you stay?' with a raised tone at the end and without a raised tone, it is still understood. "stay" and "stay?" are not different meanings of the same word ![]
"Stay" and "Stay?" will have the same meanings if you add "5W1H" (What WHen Where Who How). But if it is "free", "Stay" means to order someone to stay, and "Stay?" means that the speaker are confused why the other person want to stay.
It seems that I have to make clear my definition of tones.
I'm not comparing tones with registers, but with normal kind of pitch. In tonal syllable, it have to go definite change of pitch relative to [b]itself, not to the sentence. or word. If you want to say tonal languages, all syllables are tonal.
The definition of monosyllabic means that if a word is broken apart it still has its individual meaning. For example, train = "fo che" meaning fire train. "fo che" is not considered polysyllabic ! Whereas in indo-european languages, you cannot break up most words to have individual meaning.
"individual" breaking up into "in" "di" "vi" "dual" has no related meaning and only "in" and "dual" has meaning in itself.
I don't know what it should be called, but I guess I'll call it "Polymonosyllabic" or "Compound monosyllabic", i.e. it consists of some monosyllabic component. Its difference with an ordinary polysyllabic word is clear, it can be broken apart to its syllables and still have meaning. In Khmer lanugaes there are many monosyllabic words, but there are found an appreciable number of polysyllabic words, although usually it's only 2. It seems like basic-English, which has mostly monosyllabic words.
but rather the gaining of tones from a non-tonal language to (6 or