#modal verbs in japanese

[languagebraindump]

～べき vs ～たほうがいい

How to say should in Japanese

part I don’t even know which one because Japanese is so nuanced, I can’t honestly…

We should tell him the truth.  

This sentence can be translated to:

彼に真実を言うべきだ。

彼に真実を言った方がいい。

べき is very strong, broadly speaking. It sounds bossy and commanding.

た方がいい, on the other hand, sounds softer like a suggestion.

Which translation to chose also depends on the action itself. In some cases, it’s better to give people suggestions because no one knows what the right thing to do is. But there are situations when we all instinctively know what to do, be it societal unspoken agreements or just pure morality.

If you truly believe that revealing the truth to your friend is the right thing to do because keeping him in the dark will do more harm than good, then go for べき. After all, everyone deserves to know the truth.

In some other cases, べき can make you sound like you’re the ‘wise one.’ You know what to do, and your words should be obeyed. You’re strongly convinced that whatever you’re saying is the right thing to do. It could also sound like it is your obligation to perform the action. As always, everything depends on the context.

However, if you have an idea, a suggestion, but you’re not really sure what to do in the end, and you don’t want to sound extra bossy, then た方がいい would be your choice. In this example, た方がいい can suggest “we better do it because if he doesn’t learn the truth, shit will go down real fast” - depending on the context of course.

べき is usually explained as たほうがいい in some dictionaries, but then in some cases you can’t use them interchangeably.

Your friend is in doubt about her work. Her work is mentally draining. She needs some advice. She asks:

どうしたらいい? - what should I do? (or more literally, what’s the best thing to do? Btw, yet another phrase that can be translated to should in English… ugh. Also, you don’t ask yourself with たほうがいい)

You say: You should quit your work.

You could also say: It’d be best, if you just quit your work. Well, quitting your work, doesn’t sound like the worst idea.   Why don’t you quit your work?

Should is used to give advice, or at least that’s what ESL textbooks teach us.  However, there are other phrases to advise people. Which one you’ll use in English depends on your conviction, relation with that person, and some other factors.

Should, according to Macmillan dictionary, is used to say:

used for talking about what is right, sensible, or correct

used for saying or asking about the right or sensible thing to do or the right way to behave

If your friend’s work is mentally draining, then the sensible thing to do is to quit it. Seems just fine in English. Does it make you sound bossy in English? I’m not the one to decide because I’m not a native speaker, but I’ve heard such pieces of advice from my friends, and it didn’t sound bossy at all, just the voice of reason.

In Japanese, though, well… since it is a nuanced language, some people will definitely see you as a bossy person if you use べき on them. (confirmed with some native speakers)

べき in some grammar books is primarily listed with other phrases conveying ‘obligation’ ぎむ

So translating ‘you should quit your work’ to 仕事は辞めるべきだ isn’t the best idea.

仕事は辞めた方がいい, though, sounds like you’re giving a piece of (friendly) advice without trying to command your friend.

My Japanese teacher’s Japanese teacher, who is a native, says that べき may sound like “don’t tell me how to live my life!” But if you see someone struggling with some situation, and they don’t know what to do, and you want to give them a little push, using べき wouldn’t be so bad. It could be interpreted as a genuine try to help someone, but the context must be just right.

I’m discussing affirmative sentences, but the same logic applies to negatives as well.

Side note: In my business writing classes, our teacher told us to limit the use of should to an absolute minimum because it’s too vague in a lot of situations. If I told my little brother, “you should clean your room”, he would understand it as a very weak suggestion that he doesn’t even have to consider. But if told him, “Well, I think I should buy this new game for you”, he would understand it as “I’m getting a new game!”

He told us to be precise as much as possible. If by should we mean ‘do it now’, use a phrase that conveys an order.

So I think the best way to accurately translate should into Japanese is knowing what we really want to say.

#modality #べき #たほうがいい #should in Japanese #langblr #modality in Japanese #modal verbs

[frank-olivier]

Fumi (Speak Japanese Naturally)

The Japanese verb construction, with its system of stem forms and affixed endings, exemplifies the agglutinating nature of many Asian languages. By adding suffixes to unchanging stems, Japanese verbs can express a wide range of grammatical information like tense, aspect, modality and politeness levels. This agglutinating process is a defining feature Japanese shares with other language families across Asia, such as the Altaic languages.

However, Japanese also exhibits a unique characteristic that sets it apart - its pitch accent system. As a pitch accent language, Japanese uses contrasting pitch patterns to distinguish word meanings. This accentual system interacts with the morphological processes of verb conjugation in systematic ways.

Verbs in Japanese can be categorized into two main accent classes - heiban (unaccented) verbs that maintain a high pitch throughout, and verbs that have an accent falling on the second-to-last mora. When undergoing conjugation, the pitch patterns change in a rule-governed manner depending on which accent class the verb belongs to.

For example, the heiban verb taberu 'to eat' maintains its unaccented high pitch across conjugations like tabeta (past) and tabenai (negative). In contrast, a verb like kaku 'to write' has an accent on the second-to-last mora ka, and this accent shifts in the past form kaita and negative kakanai to avoid a sequence of accented moras.

These pitch accent alternations in verb conjugation follow set patterns based on the verb's accent class. They reflect a linguistic system that is unique to Japanese while still operating within the agglutinating framework shared across Asian languages. The interaction of pitch and morphology is a defining feature of Japanese verb grammar.

So while the core verb construction adheres to the agglutinating typology widespread in Asia, the pitch accent system and its integration with conjugation patterns represents an innovative phenomenon specific to Japanese. This dual nature highlights Japanese's role bridging the morphological conventions of its Asian linguistic context with its own highly developed prosodic system.

Japanese Verb Conjugation (February 2021)

The Pitch Accent of Verbs in Japanese (April 2021)

Saturday, May 25, 2024

#japanese #verb conjugation #pitch accent #Youtube

[paradoxcase]

Hey, who remembers when I used to post language geekery and made a whole conlang for the Homestuck trolls?  I know that was a literal decade ago. but I’m starting to think sort of semi-seriously about picking up an old worldbuilding project with some unwritten stories attached to it.  I dusted off a conlang that I actually still quite like and plan to do some more work on it.  So, I may start posting about this language here, and possibly may write a story that’s connected to the conculture it goes with.  Here is what I have of it so far.

The Doylist history of this conlang is that I was reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a very long time ago, and got to the part where there’s a paragraph where a bunch of time travel shenanigans are described in the most confusing way possible using some novel combinations of English modal verbs.  And I thought: I bet if time travellers existed in the real world, they would have a language that was specifically designed for making it easy to talk about time travel.  What would that language look like?  And I decided the best way to do it would be to mark tense on the nouns.  When all of your nouns can be different tenses, it’s easy to talk about things that are at different points in their personal timelines relative to you in the same sentence or as part of the same action.  This is also super useful for talking about other kinds of regular actions that don’t require everything involved to be colocated, and thus can span several temporal locations even without time travel.  For example, “I don’t like the way you used to be” is an action that involves a present tense participant and a past tense participant.  With a language that marks tense on the nouns, you could write this as “I-PRES don’t like you-PAST”, and it takes exactly as many words to say as “I don’t like you”, and the same is true for any combination of participants and tenses, some of which can get quite wordy in English.

The Watsonian history of this conlang is that it was created in-universe as a conlang by the all-female priesthood of a Goddess who had given them the power of time travel in order to get their society, the Cheanya, out of a tight spot where they would have all been killed by a neighboring culture.  (Or, that’s what they say happened, anyway.)  The priesthood carefully polices the use of time travel and the technology required to do it, but frequently use it themselves and can also use the technology to audio- and video-chat across times and timelines.  So, they needed an artificial language that wouldn’t change over time with which to talk to priestesses at other points in time, that they could use to talk about time travel.  The language, like the time travel technology, is a closely guarded secret of the priesthood.  It’s not a language anybody actually speaks natively, although it would have been based on the native language of the creator back when it was invented.  The country this takes place in is on a large island about 1/3 the size of Australia in the southern hemisphere, between two the two sides of a much larger continent that actually goes over the south pole and continues halfway up the other side of the world.  The language is called QuCheanya, which technically means “the people’s language” or “the Cheanya’s language”, but this is of course just a bit of propaganda since the vast majority of the Cheanya people do not actually speak it.

The language has 25 consonants and 14 vowels and diphthongs, but only allows CV syllables, which works out to exactly 350 possibly syllables, a couple hundred more than Japanese.  It has obstruents in four places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, velar, and uvular, and five series’ of such obstrunts: voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives, and voiceless affricates at all four PoAs, and palatalized voiceless stops and palatalized voiceless fricatives at the non-uvular PoAs.  It has bilabial, alveolar, and palatal nasals, alveolar and palatal laterals approximants, /r/, and /j/.  For vowels, it has a basic set of six monopthongs, which are the standard five vowels plus a phonemic schwa.  Then it has a series of four diphthongs ending in /i/, and a series of four diphthongs ending in /ə/.  Altogether this is:

with the romanization written on the right hand side.  Stress is always on the penult, if the word is four or more syllables long there will be a secondary stress on the preantepenult.  All of the voiceless obstruents are voiced intervocalically, which is where they are all of the time that they are not the first sound in the word, due to phonotactic constraints.

The writing system is a syllabary, which is the usual way that writing systems work in this part of the conworld.  Each character consists of a square frame which indicates by its shape the PoA of the onset of the syllable, to which can be attached diacritics indicating affrication and palatalization.  The interior of the character is not featurial.  The character can be followed by diacritics indicating a diphthong.  Some characters have possible variants.

The frames are written in red ink above - this is how writing is done traditionally, for official purposes.  There are different styles - you can make all of the frames red, just the ones at the beginnings of words, or just the ones at the beginnings of sentences.  Naturally, it’s a big pain in the ass and it’s not done unless this piece of writing is going to be kept around for a while.  However, since the language is basically proprietary property of the priesthood, it’s mostly used for official studies and research and documents done by the priestesses, and not so much used for everyday things like shopping lists anyway.

This is a largely head-last language with most of the morphology on the nouns.  It would probably be classified as SOV, although it’s more correct to say it is Topic-Focus-Verb.  Quantifiers and numbers precede adjectives precede nouns, adverbs (which are identical to adjectives except that they modify verbs) precede verbs, postpositions follow their objects.  The one head-first part of the language is that there are a few nominal compounds that are head-first, like for example QuCheanya as mentioned above.  However, these compounds are not very productive.

Nouns are marked for case, number, and tense. 

Tense is indicated by a single consonant: q for past tense, c for present tense, and p for future tense.  Tense strictly refers to the noun’s progress along its personal timeline, as opposed to the global world timeline.  The global world timeline is generally referenced using nouns referring to particular days/dates/times or just generally “past” or “future” in the locative case, however, there are special tenses that are used if an object is in the past or future of its timeline relative to the speaker, but is not in the past/future of the global timeline relative to the speaker.  Say, if you time travel into the past from a future point, you as you were before the time travel is in the past of your own personal timeline, but in the future of the global timeline.  So in this case you would, instead of using q to indicate past tense, use qqh to indicated “past displaced” tense, and in the reverse case would use pf to indicate “future displaced” tense.  The displaced tenses can also be used somewhat more laxly in most situations where an object or a person is considered to be in the “wrong” temporal position for what it should be due to time travel - this is naturally fairly subjective.

If the noun is the topic of the sentence, it always appears first in the sentence regardless of its role, obligatorily marks tense, and then has the topic ending -ei (singular) or -eya (plural) following the tense consonant.  For every other noun in the sentence, tense marking is optional, and leaving it off indicates that it has the same tense as the topic noun.  For non-topic nouns, the optional tense is a syllable consisting of the tense consonant followed by -a, which is followed by a case-and-number marking syllable, which is one of the following:

The nominative singular is unmarked.  Plurals always end in -a, nominatives ending in -e -i -o or -u add -a to form a diphthong, words ending in -ä change the -ä into an -a, words ending in diphthongs of the form -Vi transform into -Vya, and words already ending in -a do not change.  Nominative is for subjects, accusative for direct objects, dative for indirect objects.  Alienable genitive is marked on the possessor noun (which precedes the unmarked possessed noun) and is used for things that are alienably possessed, such as belongings and more abstract things such as thoughts and ideas.  Inalienable genitive is used for inalienably possessed things, such as body parts and family members.  Locative is used generally to mean “in/at/on” for both physical places and temporal “places”, and also with objects of postpositions indicating location in space or time, oblique is used with the objects of all other postpositions.

Pronouns are inflected for case and number.  If a tense needs to be used with a pronoun, the tense syllable (tense consonant plus -a) precedes the pronoun.

So “you” (singular) as the topic, in the present tense, would be written as “ca pfei”.

Verbs are generally invariant, although there are many verbs that are formed by prefixing a postposition onto the front of a verb to change its meaning, similar to how this happens in Latin with prepositions.

There are, however, two particles that can come after the verb in a sentence - an aspect-marking particle and a future relevance particle.  There are two possible aspect particles, sei, marking habitual aspect, and cä, marking perfective.  Unmarked sentences with no particle are by default in progressive aspect.  The future relevant particle is rui, which is actually identical in form to the postposition meaning “from”.  This is used to indicate that the action has relevance to a (relative) future time, and can be used in similar situations to English constructions like “I have finished eating”, which is different than “I finished eating” in that implies something about the present state of things, or “I will have finished eating” which is a future action that has relevance to a further future time.  It can also be used with present actions deemed relevant to the near future.

Verbs that take clauses as complements (think, want, say, know, etc.) are simply put after the clause, with no modification to the previous verb.  The two sentence ending particles mentioned above cannot, however, be used with a verb that is part of such a complement clause.  When the complementized verb is yai, the general placeholder verb that usually means “be”, “exist”, “do”, or “happen”, depending on context, yai is simply deleted.

I did some of the Conlang Test Sentences that were posted a long time ago on the Zompist BBoard in this language.  The full list of sentences is here: https://cofl.github.io/conlang/resources/mirror/conlang-syntax-test-cases.html - I will probably do more of these later as I continue to flesh out the conlang.  Here are the first 22, with interlinear glosses, to give you a practice demonstration of how the language works:

tira is an adjective/adverb that means “near”, but in a temporal sense.  With a future tense noun it means “soon”, with a past tense noun it means “recent/ly”, and with present tense it means “right now”.  It’s related to a similar adjective/adverb tile, which means “near”, but spacially.

sisiane is a partial reduplication of siane.  QuCheanya has some limited partial reduplication in closed-class word categories.

nyu- is a diminutive that is usually used to form words for baby animals.  Here in sentence 17, ninyu- is a partial reduplication of it to mean a little baby animal.

Here we have tira meaning “soon”, and qhoi taking a sentence complement (except the verb was yai, so it was deleted).

#conlang #qucheanya

[feisty-yordle]

If you dont have grammatical markers for agent and patient (like affixes and prepositions), you can either develop them, develop verb pairs, or develop conjugations for voice. Japanese, utilizing vague emphasis/modal particles, developed the latter two. Nowadays, "wo" mostly marks patients, but "ga" can only mark subjects. There is still no affix for marking nouns as agents.

#nihongo #language #voice #tadousi #jidousi #particles #grammar

[puutterings]

suttera puttera; ja, doch, schon

  the p-utterance itself no longer provides       1 does not warrant the truth of p-utterance... hedges the truth of p-utterance: negotiates truth by seeking ja, doch, schon       2   taking each P_utterance in turn       3 commitments were proposed, accepted witnessed : P_Utterance ∀ u1 ≠ u2       4   A woman who Joan knew fainted Suttera Putterance u : e woman ( Ou ) use me last       5 of a word and the next word in an 発話 [hatsuwa] Putterance begin       6   We may also observe that the child does not switch because such a Putterance O       7 the decline in Putterance Similarly, for Futterances       8   putterance Domaine roman.       9 putterance - or Langatandandan Pour Animals.       10   Girle, thou art to[o] folith,                                     so, are we to[o] long, putterance in this may grow to further wrong.       11 may be dragged into the light of day, to be destroyed or and upleten for putterance the fresh breath of balmy the first element the time spent in it is so much       12   whether in all Putterance and all know       13 the pressure of moistened thumbs, as the solemn times, is now restored an agony too great for putterance the application of restoratives .       14  

sources

1 discussion of “Non-Declarative p-Utterances,” in Markus Egg, “Discourse Particles, Common Ground, and Felicity Conditions” in Daniel Gutzmann and ‎Hans-Martin Gärtner, eds., Beyond Expressives : Explorations in Use-Conditional Meaning (Curent Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface 28; 2013) : 125-149 (135) 2 ex OCR confusion at “Table 6-2 : Mood-Modality differential,” in Werner Abraham, “(Inter)Subjectification or Foreign Consciousness / Other’s Mind Alignment as Synchronic and Diachronic Concepts of Change? Conceptualizations and Data Fidelity,” in Werner Abraham and Elisabeth Leiss, eds., Covert Patterns of Modality (2012) : 24-78 (49) 3 from Chapter 7, “A Forensic Case Study” — something about a Cumulative Paedophile Index (CPI) — in David Crystal, Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide (2011) : 127 4 R. A. Flores, P. Pasquier, and B. Chaib-draa, “Conversational Semantics with Social Commitments” in Agent Communication : International Workshop on Agent Communication, AC 2004 (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 3396; 2005) : 18-32 (22)

aside — The symbol ∀ means “for all” or “for any”. The symbol ∃ means “there exists”.5 snippet — We now combine such determiner specifications with the linking account of relative clauses ( again omitting the steps of Modus Ponens ) : ( 7 ) A woman who Joan knew fainted M dlm Si , Os ; — from Semantics : Discourse and Dynamics, vol. 6 in the series Critical Concepts in Linguistics edited by Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach (2003) : 416

and more —

Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach (1967-2016) was prolific and interesting — “...his research interests span from linguistics to other areas of studies such as film studies, philosophy, literature, sociology, and arts. He increasingly devoted himself in the last 15 years to the research of sociopolitical and ideological changes towards democracy in Latin America, Picasso’s poetry, and Conrad's oeuvre. Javier’s true passion however was cinema...” — Ohio State University, In Memoriam 6 OCR confusion at marginalia in Japanese — 発話 (hatsuwa) over “utterance” 子音 (shiin) over “consonant” — at Nancy Bonvillain, Language, Culture, and Communication : The Meaning of Messages (2000) : 154

Nancy Bonvillain, wikipedia; faculty page (Bard College at Simon’s Rock ) 7 Pilar Belendez-Soltero, Repetitions and the Acquisition of the Spanish Verb System (Harvard GSE thesis, 1984; also found as 1980) : 35

and preview snippet —

8 snippet only, from Nathaniel Otis Owings (1945-), Examining object grouping behavior and utterance meaning in late stage I nonretarded and Down’s syndrome children (University of Wisconsin thesis, 1976) : 78

better metadata at hathitrust son of Nathaniel A Owings (architect, 1903-1984), wikipedia stepson of artist Margaret Wentworth Owings (1913-99) wikipedia, obituary (New York Times, 31 January 1999) see also the bookplate designed for her stepson, by Margaret Wentworth Owings, in report about her Oral History (and papers) at the Bancroft Library, in Bancroftiana 105 (December 1992) : 1-2 9 snippet — ... y los dialectos hispanoromances y gascones 196-7 ( Madrid 1956 ) , as cited in Hall's article , 551 . ( 3 ) Hall , ibid . , 552 . ( 4 ) Hall , ibid . , 554 . Position Proto - Romance West Romance I 2 ## putterance Domaine roman. ... from Orbis : bulletin international de documentation linguistique (1966) : 68

10 OCR misread, putterance for “difference,” in an interesting, alliterative mess involving “Brown Swiss Sires,” List of Sires Proved in Dairy-Herd-Improvement Associations, 1950 (USDA Agriculture Handbook No. 7, July 1950) : 32

bound with Handbook nos. 1-9 (for 1950), and misidentified (by Google) as No. 1, Forest Fire-danger Measurement in the Eastern United States 11 OCR misread of “sufferance” at John Day (dramatist), The Fair Maid of Bristow (1912) : snippet view and — ana [Anabel, “in her wastcote”].       O say not so, deeere father héele repent,       And I shall have a husband of new birth. god [Sir Godfrey]       Girle, thou art to[o] foolish, so are we to[o] long,       Sufferance in this may grow to further wrong. — Act IV, Scene 1, lines 602-605, The Faire Maide of Bristow : A Comedy Now First Reprinted from the Quarto of 1605, Edited and with an introduction and notes by Arthur Hobson Quinn (Philadelphia, 1902) : 61 John Day (1574-1638), wikipedia 12 OCR misread, at Great Thoughts from Master Minds (London; 1899?) : 222

13 OCR cross-column misread, at 1 Corinthians 1, The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Translated out of the Greek : Being the version set forth A.D. 1611, Compared with the most ancient authorities and revised A.D. 1881 (Cambridge, 1881) : 261 aside — see remarkable, errata-like “List of readings and renderings preferred by the American Committee, recorded at their desire,” pages 407-419 14 OCR misread of utterance, and “proclaimed” the line below (quite a mess) at review of Scotland, Social and Domestic. Memorials of Life and Manners in North Britain. By the Rev. Charles Rogers. in The Athenaeum : Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts (No. 2182, August 21, 1869) : 234-235  

#putterance #and followed by a pause

[languagestudymaterials]

How to say ‘must’ & ‘have to’ in Japanese

しなければいけません / しなければならない

Differences:

なりません

comes from 'to become’ なる;

used when we refer to future;

it implies that the “obligation” comes from you;

more subjective.

いけません

rules imposed by others; laws, regulations, necessity;

the perspective also changes – it’s no longer your opinion, but something is required or should be done;

used to refer to present situations;

more objective;

しなければ

a bit more formal;

stronger in meaning;

rare in everyday speech;

‘social’ obligation;

conditional form; If we don’t do sth…

しなくては

more ‘delicate’;

a tad less formal;

might imply ‘my own duty’;

more common in speech;

ない in its て form + は = to not do something is…

しなければいけません - If we don’t do X, sth else won’t become, or we won’t be able to move forward – that would be the literal meaning.

しなくてはなりません - By not doing X, we won’t be able to move forward.

しなければいけません – if we don’t do X, “we will be in trouble…” kind of vibe (We will be in trouble because of the law, rules, my parents will scold me, Levi hechou is going to kick my ass…)

しなくてはいけません – By not doing X, “we will be in trouble…” kind of feeling

In the original, Eren says:

[なきゃ is more casual way to say しなければ]

殺さなきゃならない

And then he repeats himself, but he changes the “have to/ must” form to:

殺さなきゃいけないんだ

Why なきゃ? Because he is speaking to Historia, and there’s no need to be super formal or anything.

The English translation uses “must” twice. The first time Eren says, “I must kill them”; he speaks from his own perspective and is more subjective - If we don’t kill them we won’t be able to move forward – that’s his (kind of) opinion.

The second “I must kill them” in Japanese implies that he has changed his perspective and now sees the whole situation as required. He’s more objective.

EXTRA!

When you drop ならない・いけません you need to follow/analyze the context to know what the speaker really means. Some activities aren’t regulated by law, and it is rather obvious that you are being subjective.

When you talk about something commonly known and regulated by law, then you can infer that the speaker means いけない.

When the activity is uncertain (the example with Eren), it’s better to add either   ならない or いけません to clarify what you really mean (I’m being subjective or objective).

#have to #must #しなくてはいけません #しなければいけませ #modal verbs in japanese #japanese with manga #modality

[gwendolynlerman]

Introduction to linguistics

Language as medium

Sign languages

Basic facts

Sign languages are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning. They are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and not mutually intelligible with each other.

Both spoken and signed communication are types of natural language, since both emerged through an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning. Sign language should not be confused with body language, a type of nonverbal communication.

Although signing is primarily used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people, it is also used by hearing individuals, such as those unable to physically speak, those who have trouble with spoken language due to a disability or condition, or those with deaf family members, such as children of deaf adults.

It is unclear how many sign languages currently exist worldwide. Each country generally has its own native sign language, and some have more than one. There are somewhere between 138 and 300 different types of sign language. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.

History

5th century BCE - earliest written record of a sign language

16th century CE - first manual alphabet

1620 - first modern treatise of sign language phonetics

1698 - earliest known printed pictures of consonants of the modern two-handed alphabet

1755 - first school for deaf children

1864 - foundation of the only liberal arts university for deaf people in the world

Characteristics

Sings are the equivalent of words, which are made up of three main components:

Hand shape: different configurations of fingers that are extended or bent. Most sign languages have about 30 distinct hand shapes.

Location: locations on or near the signer’s body (about 10 locations) or in the space around it (based on oppositions of left and right, up or down, and forward or backward).

Movement: the direction that the hands move in. There are six basic directions that are modified in a number of different ways.

Just as words in spoken languages can be described as combinations of a limited number of consonants and vowels, signs in sign languages are combinations of a limited number of hand shapes, locations, and movements. Typologically, the grammars of sign languages combine features that are common in spoken languages but which do not usually co-occur. On the one hand, they are largely analytic and depend on sign order. Sign languages are basically SVO, but with some flexibility. On the other hand, they have very rich morphology that is only sometimes applied.

Their morphology is mostly based on two processes. The first one is reduplication, i.e., repeating all or part of a sign. In many sign languages, nouns can be made from verbs by reducing and repeating the movement, so that SIT means “to sit” and SIT-SIT means “chair”.

The other process is internal modification. This means that one component of the sign changes while other parts do not. Some verbs, for example, can show the subject or object through the direction of movement. In other cases, verbs can indicate information about number by changing the hand shape.

These two processes can be combined. Adjectives in ASL have up to 12 different aspectual forms made by modifying the speed and manner of movement along with the number of repetitions.

Sign languages are also about a lot more than hands. Non-manual elements such as facial, head, and shoulder movements are an integral part of sign language grammars and mark types of sentences and different parts of sentences like relative clauses.

Classification

Sign languages can be grouped in the following families: French Sign Language family, German Sign Language family, Vietnamese sign languages & some Thai and Lao sign languages, Arab Sign Language family, Indo-Pakistani Sign Language, Chinese Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language family, and BANZSL family.

#langblr #sign languages #lingblr

[mothpoems]

portrait of a mirror after fists || transcription below

Japanese does not have future tense modal verbs like “will” or “be going to” in English… The basic form of all Japanese verbs is by default present tense and future tense at the same time. We must read a sentence in context in order to know the tense. [x]

tomorrow i came back as a better version of the same story and taught myself my mother’s language, pretending water can still be held. with my teeth i strip the skin from words  that do not recognize me.

i say them anyway. they deflate  on a tongue born salt-white from the  wrong ocean. i look in the mirror and  a girl stares back with someone’s face.  it’s supposed to be mine, but i don’t know how to tell.

ghosts with reflection-voices regret the unlearning that leaves no space to forget. tomorrow remembers me even if i do not. 

mirrorgirl speaks my language and says, there’s just you here, dark-eyed  and wanting, there will never  be anyone else to blame.

mirrorgirl says, i know you will still try.

#spilled ink #poets on tumblr #lookaimi #wearywnet #teacup13 #inkstains #wlwocpoetrynet

[p3l0k3n]

CL 3

The WIP grammar summary is about as finished as it can be for now. I still have some areas to work out. I have made Docs for specific topics to flesh things out and to figure out the things I haven't been able to simply by making the summary - like how am I going to mark passive voice, how will I change my numbers from cardinal to ordinal, which aspects do I want for my verbs, will everything be done by particles or will there be affixes as well?

Here's the current Romanization:

<i a u m n ň mb nd ňg p t k f s x>

Ň is /ŋ/, followed by the series of prenasalized stops. IPA for the rest.

<b d g v z y> are allophones, with <y> as /ɣ/.

It's a mora (V/CV) timed language with high and low pitch (a system I haven't worked out yet because I haven't decided on what any of the words are in my WIP).

The language is SVO, but only because the finite verbs (aspect and modality) come after the subject; the nonfinite verb comes after the object. Tense relies on adverbs, usually before the subject.

So there's some Japanese, some German, and the numbers are a bit of Spanish (the "y uno" part). Those will be in another post.

I haven't assigned them readings yet, but it will be "until later."

#conlang

[semusepsu]

I'm thinking about how much English marks hypothetical situations with an intersection of past and future marking.

The common auxiliary verbs would and should are the past tense forms of will and shall. This suggests that hypotheticality often begins with an extension of the future in the past tense; consider that while you can say "I am going to buy that" and refer to a real situation (or at least one that is not definitely counterfactual) when you say "I was going to buy that" it implies that the situation did not occur, simply because if you actually bought it you could have just said so with a simple past. Over time, the past tense of "be going to" might extend into other kinds of hypothetical situations just like would and should.

This incidentally is why these auxiliaries do not shift into the past like can/could, and have to rely on lexical verb past participles (I would have bought that instead of I woulded buy that).

Speaking of can/could, this is one where the formal past tense by itself conveys hypotheticality. Which is weird if you think about it; if anything the future would seem to be the tense you would expect to be hypothetical, since any statement about the future is a little uncertain, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is one of those times when an unrelated language would be useful to look at. But the only other language that I feel confidently about my knowledge of is Japanese, which uses modal forms that are not tense based, so it is not really a useful comparison. The Japanese verb hairu (enter) has a past tense haitta and modal forms like hairô, hairē which are unrelated to the past morphology, and there is no dedicated future morphology in Japanese.

#language nut tag

[languagebraindump]

Expressing assumptions/speculations/guesses in Japanese

Cool scene. Deidara was the coolest Akatsuki memember so he allowed himself to sit on dead Gaara. The disrespect was real and Naruto got really mad. This  way they found out who the jinchuriki was. English translation was: That must be him Japanese: どうやらそうみたいだな Depending on the source the translations differ.

I remember I was so confused."Where is “must” in Japanese?!?!” I quickly remembered all the “must” forms I’d learned in Japanese, and none of them matched with what Deidara had said. I was really frustrated!

どうやら is most commonly translated as “apparently,” and it is a way for the speaker to emphasize his objectivity or possibly doubt.

そうみたいだな = it seems so, it looks like so, it looks like it is him.

Must is used for saying that you think something is probably true because nothing else seems possible.

Every evidence that you’re shown screams “That’s him! that’s him!” So, you’re like “According to the evidence, you’re the jinchuriki!” -> logical assumption. But it’s not like someone else has confirmed this as well. It’s just your assumption. Modal verbs are tricky and the best way to study them in Japanese is to learn a concept behind a certain modal verb and look for phrases that match that concept in Japanese.

(Logical) assumptions/speculations/guesses in Japanese can be expressed through:

どうやらそうみたいだな

Verb casual + はずです

〈当然 as a matter of course 〉 ought to do; should do

〈推測 guesses〉 must 《be》

〈予定 plans〉 be expected to do; be to do; be due to do.

言ったはずだ = I told you!

筈（はず）がない

cannot 《be》

it is hardly possible that…

そのう わさは本当であるはずがない = The rumor cannot be true.

～に決（き）まっている   sure to ...; certain to ...; bound to ...; it's natural that ..  

彼は成功するに決まっている. It is certain that he will succeed.

我々は勝つに決まっている. We ought to win.

きっと〜だ [adverb; often paird with だろう・でしょう]

これはきっとよく売れるよ I bet this product will sell really well. (It must sell well since it’s so good; that’s my assumption)

さぞ + phrase I’m sure; I’m certain [often paird with だろう・でしょう]

さぞおもしろいことがあったでしょうね。 It must have been very interesting.

さぞお退屈でしょう. You must find it dull.

phrase + ではないか・じゃないか (you can also translate it as “isn’t it’ [tag questions] They, too, express assumptions and speculations)

ダメじゃないか you can’t do that (my assumption, after considering all the circumstances, is that you can’t do that)

彼は来ないのではないかと思う。 I am afraid he won't come.

～に違いない   (にちがいない)  Used when the speaker believe in something with high persuasive.

何か間違いがあるに違いない。 There must be some kind of mistake.

これは良いに違いない！ This should be good!

君は金持ちに違いない。 You must be rich.

～だろう・でしょう　

〈推量〉 I think; I suppose; I reckon; I guess

 I hope (that)…

 I am afraid/ I fear (that)…

〈恐らく…だろう〉 perhaps; probably; maybe

彼はあす来るだろう. He will probably come tomorrow.

楽しいだろう I bet it'll be fun.

Extra phrases which also (in a way) express assumptions

だから～だろうな(あ)

あなたに見初められた女性だからきっと素敵な人なんだろうな  She must be a wonderful person since YOU chose her.

～に自信(じしん)がある I belive that ...

～を確信(かくしん)している I’m convinced that...

～かもしれないね。

～と思う・考える to think

It can be true.　本当かもしれないね。

Which one to use tho? It depends on how convinced you are about your assumption and, as always, your speaker (friend, boss, etc.) Also, the more you read or listen and produce the language, the better you will get at recognizing the right context for each phrase. I’m still getting corrected, like, “naaah in this case I’d use this [phrase], it’s not like yours is wrong but this one [phrase] sounds better”

Bonus!

Our one and only! TSUNADE!

こちらの返事分かっているだろう！ダメだ！

context: Two old ugly people just told her some nasty stuff about Naruto and her decision-making process was shit and that she should limit Naruto activities to zero.

English: You must already know my answer to this one / Then you should know what my answer will be / I guess you know my answer to this one

Tsunade is making an assumption here with だろう

Bonus 2!

Everyone’s favorite (or at least mine) MADARA <3!!

Context: Madara impales Sasuke and says:

言ったはずだ、残された時間は少ないとな…　 

(言ったはずだ, in proper Japanese, should have been placed after と but in everyday Japanese such inversions are common. Since 残された時間は少ないと is the last phrase Madara added な [sentence ending particle])

時間は充分やっただろう... 残念だ

Again, depending on the source translations may very

I warned/told you there was not much time left

I have given you enough time; I gave more than ample time to do something; I gave you enough time to make a decision.

Madara made an offer to Sasuke, Sasuke was like “yeah, right like I wanna be friends with you” and came to beat the shit out of Madara. Since Madara is a cunning bitch, he stabs him and ASSUMES that 1. he already told him what’s up (はずだ) and 2. that Sasuke has been given enough time to make a decision (だろう) and it’s too late to go back (from stabbing that is; 残念だ)

Bonus 3!

言ったはずだぞ、二度はないと

(Sukuna to Mahito when Mahito tried to kill Nanami and Itadori entered his domain expansion with force)

I think I’ve already told you that there won’t be a second time (Mahito already tried to touch Sukuna’s soul once and Sukuna “ignored” it that time around)

#deidara #anime #japanese with anime #langblr #modal verbs in japanese #japanese modality #modality in Japanese #expressing assumptions in Japanese #translation #my japanese

[koekjelanguage]

grammatical terms

English   ///   Dutch   ///   Japanese

noun   ///    naamwoord   ///　名詞 pronoun   ///   voornaamwoord   ///   代名詞 verb   ///   werkwoord   ///   動詞 modal/auxiliary verb   ///   hulpwerkwoord   ///   助動詞 particle   ///   partikel   ///   助詞 adjective   ///   bijvoeglijk naamwoord   ///   形容詞 adverb   ///   bijwoord   ///   副詞 conjunction   ///   voegwoord   ///   接続詞 preposition   ///   voorzetsel   ///   前置詞 relative pronoun   ///   betrekkelijk vnw   ///   関係代名詞 compound noun   ///   ???   ///    複合名詞？ demonstrative pronoun   ///   ???   ///    指示代名詞(this, that etc)

vowel   /// klinker /// 母音 consonant ///  /// 子音 prefix ///  /// 接頭辞 (ex; un-from unhappy) suffix ///  /// 接尾辞 (ex; -ly from slowly) plural /// meervoud /// 複数

reflexive pronoun  ///  /// 再帰代名詞 indefinite pronoun  ///  /// 不定代名詞 (ex; alles, allebei etc)

past participle ///  /// 過去分詞

duration ///  /// 進行形

compound sentence ///  /// 重文(主節が2つ以上並列されている文)

#Nederlands #Vlaams #Dutch #Flemish #language learning #langblr #Japanese #grammar

[vocalfriespod]

Water is Life Addendum: The Diné Bizaad (Navajo) Verb

As noted on Episode 42: Water is Life, the verb in Diné Bizaad is quite complicated. For example:

ch’íshidiniɫdazh

‘someone jerked me outdoors’

This verb is made up of a stem (-dazh) and a bunch of prefixes (things attached to the front of something).

                                                                                      verb stem

ch’í                     shi  di                     ni          ɫ              dazh

out horizontally  me  arms and legs modal  causative move in a jerky manner

You can see from this example that verbs can be internally very complicated. Young and Morgan (1987) provide us with a template* with up to 17 slots:

However, the maximum number of prefixes on a stem appears to be 8 (so 9 slots).

Does this template make your eyes cross? Mine too, and I’ve looked at it for over 20 years. It’s not very transparent. Which is maybe why the Japanese were unable to crack Navajo Code.

One thing to remember is that Diné verbs must be at least two syllables long, and so the verb stem on its own is not enough, but the verb stem doesn’t need every slot to be filled.

For example:

yishcha

ish-cha

I-cry

‘I cry.’

yishdzį́į́s

ish-dzį́į́s

I-drag/tow

‘I’m dragging or towing it along.’

Our first example had 5 prefixes, and 6 is easy to find as well

ch’íshidiniɫdazh

ch’í-shi-di-ni-ɫ-dazh

out-me-arms/legs-modal-causative-move.jerkily

‘someone jerked me outdoors’

bíbiniisį́į́įh

bí-bi-ni-i-ish-ɫ-sį́į́h

against-him-endpoint-transitive-I-causative-stand

‘I lean him standing against it.’

You get the point. It’s complicated! Which is all the more reason to love Diné (and all Athabaskan languages).

* There are non-templatic ways to analyze the Diné verb, but I don’t know enough about them to even attempt to describe them.

______________

Carrie

#linguistic discrimination #athabaskan #athabaskan languages #diné #diné bizaad #navajo #navajo verb #verbs #addendum #verb template #templatic morphology

[warau-okami]

復讐「ふくしゅう」fukushuu : revenge

Also can be a するverb

私は復讐できる。「わたしわふくしゅうできる。」

watashi wa fukushuudekiru.

I can take revenge.

私「わたし」 watashi : I, me, myself

は「わ」wa : particle marks the topic

復讐「ふくしゅう」fukushuu : revenge

できる dekiru : potential verb conjugate

Please note the grammar differences in these sentences. English uses the modal verb "can" to change the sentence into potential form. Japanese only changes the verb conjugate.

#japanese langblr #langblr #nihongo #japanese vocabulary #vocabulary #verb conjugation #verb tense #verb #word a day

[learningcherryblossoms]

Vocabulary google sheet...thing

Hello! It is a long work in progress but if you’d like, here is a link to my google sheet. it’s a little tricky cause like French doesn’t have modal verbs and there are literally exceptions to everything but in this list you will find vocab words that I’ve been working on from duolingo and some other sources. All of these words can be found via my quizlet for the most part. 

It’s just a nice little chart with vocab terms so you can like see what the same word is in the different languages that I’m learning. 

I’m planning on adding more. but the ones that are currently in there are French, Dutch, Hawaiian, Japanese and a very very small amount of Norwegian. 

Hopefully you’ll find this useful. I find this useful when I’m making flashcards. if you see any errors let me know because its really tricky lol and i could use all the help I can get.

#langsources #langblr #dutch #french #norwegian #japanese #adventstudies

[languagestudymaterials]

～べき

More here

べき is an example of modality in Japanese. It implies that there is something “right” to do.

Gojo is asking what the right thing to do is. (He’s checking Megumi’s knowledge on jujutsushi laws; should we kill Yuuji or let him live)

So  べき usually gets translated to “should” but the meaning behind it suggests that there are some laws or policies that dictate the right way of conduct.

#modality in japanese #べき #japanese with manga #Jujutsu Kaisen #jjk chapter 2 #should #modal verbs in japanese