HonyakuJoshua Wrote:Thanks for the reply Fillanzea - it is indeed complicated, it is obviously a patent. Can I ask how you concluded that it modifies ＣＳＶ型式の送信用データ. and not another noun like パスワード及びＥメールアドレス ?

This isn't a loaded question, I just honestly don't understand.

Josh

All that stuff is modifying 送信用データ (really just the データ part). It's stored in memory beforehand, includes data relating to recipients (? don't know that one) including passwords and email addresses, and is in CSV format.

It's converting from a csv format file with passwords and email addresses in it into a pdf file. The crap about the csv file being stored in memory is just the usual patent waffle.

That's my reading of it. I won't swear 100% to my interpretation, but i can't really see how it would make sense in any other way. I'm a electrical engineer, so this is pretty close to my field, but not quite (i specialise in embedded systems, control systems, etc). You can't just parse this stuff based purely on grammar, you do have to have an understanding of what they're talking about. Do you understand what these words mean or are you just using a dictionary and grammar knowledge to stitch together a translation?

I'm not going to bother piecing the rest of it together because i have no real interest in reading it (man, patents are boring in any language, and this one is such a ridiculous one reading it will just make me angry). If you've got any other questions, i'm happy to answer them though.

Fillanzea Wrote:And since we move on to the next step in the sequence, I think we don't have to worry about any relative clauses floating around looking for something to attach to in the rest of the paragraph.

Doesn't make any difference to your analysis, but strictly speaking you're not quite at the next step in the sequence yet, because step one is [etc etc etc]ＰＤＦファイルを作成し、記憶装置に格納するステップ, so everything we've seen so far is just part of the clause modifying ステップ...

The whole sentence boils down to (stuff)するステップと、(stuff)するステップと、(stuff)するステップと、(stuff)するステップと、(stuff)するステップとを含む。 This is almost certainly standard boilerplate phrasing for Japanese patents and the OP needs to find out the equivalent standard English boilerplate. (Google suggests "A method of [doing something], the method comprising the steps of [A], [b], [C] and [D]" but I'm no patent expert.)

zigmonty Wrote:You can't just parse this stuff based purely on grammar, you do have to have an understanding of what they're talking about. Do you understand what these words mean or are you just using a dictionary and grammar knowledge to stitch together a translation?

idealistically I want to look at just the grammar and understand the sentence - for example if I read

ｙはｘをz

I would that y does a verb to z - I want to understand how the sentence works grammatically without looking at vocabulary - I know this isn't possible with the sentences like the above, but this is what I am aiming for.

Thanks for your offer of help!

Here are two English sentences:

John promised Mary to go to the meeting.

John asked Mary to go to the meeting.

In each sentence, who is going to go to the meeting?

It is the nature of languages that you can't deduce meaning from grammar alone, because words encode into themselves information about what roles they're looking for in a sentence. And knowing the meaning of ask, or promise, means knowing who's going to go to that meeting. So...yes it's essential to know what the structure of a sentence is doing, but it's impossible to really separate it from the meaning.

And you can't deduce grammatical structure without word meanings; the classic example is:
1. Time flies like an arrow
2. Fruit flies like a banana
These have two different grammatical parses, but to determine that in 1 'flies' is a verb and in 2 'like' is a verb you need to know that 'fruit flies' exist but 'time flies' don't and otherwise generally understand the meanings of the words.

This is similar to the Japanese sentence you started with -- there are often several possible ways to parse a sentence if you look at it as just a collection of nouns and verbs and linking bits of grammar; it's the meanings of the words and common sense about what the author might conceivably be trying to say that resolves this theoretical ambiguity.

What's the difference between
domo arigato
and
arigato gozarimasu?

Wherever I look they are both listed as more formal versions of arigato.

(P.S. How do you type in kana and kanji?)

pm215 Wrote:

Elenkis Wrote:それから、日本語で答えてくれる場合でも、普通の日本人の使わないような、変な日本語で答えられることも多いそうだ。

Ok, I understand what this sentence says but I just have a grammatical question.

Is "普通の日本人の使わないような" modifying "変な日本語", or are "普通の日本人の使わないような" and "変な" both modifying "日本語"? If that makes any sense... The comma just makes me wonder.

I think I'd say that both are modifying 日本語, although there isn't a great deal of difference between the two alternatives you suggest. Is "big red truck" a red truck which is big, or a truck which is both big and red?

The comma is a helpful insert to cue you that 普通の日本人の使わないような is not modifying 変, which would be a significantly different (and wrong) grammatical analysis. (NB: the lack of a comma in this situation doesn't imply anything either way, not all authors put in commas in this kind of situation.)

Sorry to go back to this, but I'd like to know if it's always the case that in situations like this where you've got multiple なs they always describe the noun. If that isn't the case, how did you know what was correct in this instance? And if that is the case, how would you go about describing the 変ness? Would you need seperate sentences?

Thanks for any help.

Marble101 Wrote:What's the difference between
domo arigato
and
arigato gozarimasu?

Wherever I look they are both listed as more formal versions of arigato.

(P.S. How do you type in kana and kanji?)

Typing in Japanese - go to control panel clock language and region - change keyboards - find Japanese - click on add.

open word (for example) press alt and shift together to change to Japanese. If you see an 'A' press ctrl and caps to change it to あ.

If you press a now, you will see あ with a line underneath - press space to get a list of kanji. Choose which kanji you want.

If I haven't explained this well enough there are videos on YouTube

I don't know the answer to your first question but I did find this on yahoo answers - http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...745AAUZWJl It is a small point but it is arigato gozaimasu not arigato gozarimasu

Josh

Splatted Wrote:Sorry to go back to this, but I'd like to know if it's always the case that in situations like this where you've got multiple なs they always describe the noun. If that isn't the case, how did you know what was correct in this instance?

This wasn't directed at me, but here's my 2 guesses. I find that comma use is really inconsistent, so I basically try to stay flexible and interpret sentences on a case by case basis (using a combination of grammar and word/clause meaning). Commas are often used to avoid a misinterpretation, so at least you can rule out one possibility. :-)
English has some rules relating to order of pre-noun adjectives, but I haven't come across similar rules for Japanese.

A sequence of adjective nouns (na-adjs) is supposed to use で　to join them.
親切な＋きれいな　→　親切できれいな　 　　kind and pretty

で　is also used with clauses in the same way, but perhaps clauses are more likely to retain the な? Without the comma, perhaps it would have used で　and had more of an "and" meaning.

I'd probably interpret your sentence as the ような　clause modifying 変な日本語　as a single entity. (In the same way that 変な人　almost feels like one word...) Also, "strange Japanese that Japanese wouldn't normally use" might be contrasted with "rude Japanese that Japanese wouldn't use" or "archaic Japanese that Japanese wouldn't use use" To me, this has a very slightly different feel than : "Japanese that people don't use and is strange." It's more of a causal relationship than two independent properties of 日本語.

With other sentences with multiple relative clauses, it's more apparent that each one modifies the noun separately. (Maybe bc it's hard to perceive a noun modified by a relative clause as a single entity?) I don't think it's something you need a hard rule for.

Not really sure though, so I'd be interested to hear what others think.

Could a person More knowledgeable than me either congratulate me if I have this right or Let me down gently?

鯨の白身肉を用い、白身肉に含有されるコラーゲンを利用して白身肉と赤身肉とを強固に結着させた白身肉と赤身肉が混在する鯨肉ハムの製造方法を提供することである。
supplies a method of producing whale meat that intermingles lean meat and white meat that strongly combines lean meat and white meat that uses collagen included in white meat and uses the white meat of a whale.

I'm thinking that 強固に結着させた　modifies 鯨肉ハム　rather than 白身肉 just because... if it modifies 白身肉, then you have red meat and white meat being combined, and then the resulting white(?) meat is combined with red meat again, and even though I'm a vegetarian, and the process of producing ham from whale meat is pretty alien to me, that doesn't make too much sense to me if there's another interpretation I can find. And there is -- we can think of [白身肉に含有されるコラーゲンを利用して白身肉と赤身肉とを強固に結着させた] and [白身肉と赤身肉が混在する] as two clauses that each modify 鯨肉ハム.


My translation would probably be something like...

Using white whale meat, supplies a method of producing whale meat ham in which white meat and lean meat are mixed together, and in which the white meat and the lean meat are firmly bound together using the collagen contained in the white meat.

And there is -- we can think of [白身肉に含有されるコラーゲンを利用して白身肉と赤身肉とを強固に結着させた] and [白身肉と赤身肉が混在する] as two clauses that each modify 鯨肉ハム.


Thanks, that is very useful it is going in my grammar note book. I didn't actually think of this being two clauses, but if there was a comma I would have looked at it differently: is there a law in Japanese that there should be a comma?

Marble101 Wrote:What's the difference between
domo arigato
and
arigato gozarimasu?

Wherever I look they are both listed as more formal versions of arigato.

"Dou mo" and "gozaimasu" accomplish different things.

In general, whether or not you attach "gozaimasu" is determined by the formality of the situation. So if you're talking to your boss, someone older than you or higher in rank than you, a customer of yours, or someone you don't know very well, you would attach "gozaimasu" to "arigatou."

"Dou mo" is attached to show a deeper gratitude.

So if you want to thank your friend for something, you can just say "Arigatou."
If you want to thank your friend, but emphasize that you really appreciated it, you would say "Dou mo arigatou."
If you want to thank someone who helped you, but you don't really know them, you would say "Arigatou gozaimasu."
If you wanted to thank someone who you don't know well, but show extra appreciation, you would say "Dou mo arigatou gozaimasu."

In reality this is a bit simplified, because it all gets tangled together. I could imagine being in some place that's really super fancy and the staff would say "Dou mo arigatou gozaimasu" when thanking any customers, since deeper attitude is getting tied into to extra politeness. But in general I think that "dou mo" is about the level of gratitude, and "gozaimasu" is about the level of politeness.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:I didn't actually think of this being two clauses, but if there was a comma I would have looked at it differently: is there a law in Japanese that there should be a comma?

No. Commas weren't used in Japanese at all until European literature started to have an influence in the 19th century, and there are still no hard rules about when they're used, only general tendencies. If a comma is present that's a useful clue, but you can't deduce much from the lack of a comma -- the author might just not use commas so much, or felt they didn't need one in this sentence.

(I ran into an interesting PDF describing an attempt to automatically insert commas into sentences. The early parts of the paper talk about different kinds of comma usage and how often you actually get commas in the various situations they mention. In particular you only get a comma after a word which modifies some distant word a half to a third of the time. They also briefly mention at the end that a second human repunctuating the texts only put about 80% of the commas in the same place as the original writer.)

pm215 Wrote:No. Commas weren't used in Japanese at all until European literature started to have an influence in the 19th century

That's not entirely true. Punctuation has a fairly long history in Japanese writing, and in the Muromachi and Edo periods (at least) things that looked like commas and periods were used, although there wasn't a clear distinction between them and they tended to be used rather haphazardly. And some authors used them frequently, others not at all. (A Keichu text I have here has a period/comma distinction; I don't have the introductory matter to check whether this was added in by an editor, but that would be surprising to me.)

I'm sure that the foreign influence increased the usage of punctuation and made it more standard, but it's not the case that it didn't exist at all before Meiji.

Thanks for the correction. (I was relying on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_punctuation ...)

While we're still on the subject of commas... The following sentence was a bit of a weird one for me:

ジルは笑顔のとても似合う、明るくてやさしい女の子だ。

Are 笑顔のとても似合う and 明るくてやさしい both modifying 女の子?

Yep. That's a common use of commas, as we've seen in this thread (although it's not necessary).

yudantaiteki Wrote:Yep. That's a common use of commas, as we've seen in this thread (although it's not necessary).

Thanks!

pm215 Wrote:If a comma is present that's a useful clue TO WHICH WORD A MODIFIER MODIFIES, but you can't deduce much from the lack of a comma )

This with my capitals is going in my grammar book.

MANY THANKS

I'm trying to wrap my head around the no-particle. Here's some sentences I'm struggling to understand completely:

その人が買うんじゃなかったの？

I figured that the -n in kaunjanakatta already works as the explaining "no"-particle. What's the other no doing there then?

Secondly when it comes to the above sentence and this one:

今、授業があるんじゃない？

The translations seem unclear. The first one is roughly translated as"that person was the one buying wasn't he?" while the second sentence should say "isn't it that there isn't a class (assuming there is)?"

However since both sentences have present form of the verb (aru and kau) and are being conjugated in negative tense how come the meaning changes from "there isn't a class" to "was buying"? Shouldn't they both be consistent (aside from the other being in past tense)?

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here

1. の also works as a casual question particle. In fact I think it's fair to say that in casual contexts it is more common than か.

2. Are you sure that's what the translation says? You're right, it should be "isn't it that there is a class?"

It's a tag question. The questions are actually affirmative.

"Didn't that person buy it?"
"Don't you have class now?"

The pattern here is ”のではない？” being more or less the same as ”か”, it's simply to ask a question. It's just more indirect than a blunt question.

Edit: I mean か as a beginner knows it, as in a polite sentence (ですか etc). か actually takes on a different nuance in a plain-form question.

By blunt do you mean in less formal sentences, or when said with a certain tone of voice?

Marble101 Wrote:By blunt do you mean in less formal sentences, or when said with a certain tone of voice?

No... i just mean less indirect.