tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 31 22:25:29 1994
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Relative clauses surprises
- From: [email protected] (Nick NICHOLAS)
- Subject: Relative clauses surprises
- Date: Wed, 2 Feb 94 3:17:45 EDT
I'm doing some text statistics on all the relative clauses that have been
used on the list since September. I've compiled 286 clauses up to the end
of December so far, and while I haven't done any counts, two results I really
didn't expect at all have turned out. One, we don't use -'e' marking for
Relative clauses anywhere near as frequently as I thought. Two, far from
being rare and left alone, clauses in which the head is other than subject
or object, either of the main or the relative clause, are damn frequent.
Instead of avoiding the classic "ship I left from" problem, we seem to
be actively pursuing it!
I really don't know what to make of this all, but it's going to change
the article I'll write for HolQeD, that's for certain.
--
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| "One must first know that traditionally a Japanese bus has carried not |
| only a driver but one or more young girls who stand in the aisles and |
| sell tickets, announce stops, and in general console the passengers for |
| the inadequacies and discomforts of this transient world." \
| --- Roy Andrew Miller, _The Japanese Language_, p. 251 |
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\||||[email protected]||||||Transient Passenger|||||||Nick Nicholas||||
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