nadiatims Wrote:You keep mentioning this Eleanor Jorden person, so I researched her a bit. "Japanese The Spoken Language" is (according to wikipedia) "controversial both among students of the language and among pedagogical researchers."
It gets pretty harshly criticized in a lot of Amazon.com reviews too. I wish you'd stop saying I'm wrong because linguist X says so, and just show me where I'm wrong. You seem to be reading all these linguistic papers on the subject so it shouldn't be too difficult for you to explain your point of view.

The reason Japanese: The Spoken Language is considered controversial is because of the method of teaching and the use of romaji, not Jorden's ability as a linguist. Actually, she's regarded highly in the Japanese teaching community. You often see Japanese: The Spoken Language cited in papers about Japanese grammar, and citing textbooks in that way is super-rare.

Anyway, she was a great woman. I met her once about two years before she died, and she was quite lively and fun for someone who was about 85.

Tzadeck Wrote:There's certainly at least one that can never be used that way--できる.

~ぐらいできろよ！

iSoron Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:There's certainly at least one that can never be used that way--できる.

~ぐらいできろよ！

Really? If you can say that I didn't know. I could be wrong.

go type "できろ" into google with quotes. You'll get about 50,000 hits. Top of the list: 彼女できろ

isoron Wrote:Not exactly the best examples (they have less than 300 actual hits); but I get the point:

I just tried again, ”怒ったんじゃなかった” in quotes gets about 3 million hits, and "死ぬんじゃなかった” gets 1 million hits. Am I doing something wrong?

Tzadeck Wrote:

iSoron Wrote:~ぐらいできろよ！

Really? If you can say that I didn't know. I could be wrong.

From a light novel:

「いくらなんでも、レベル低すぎねえ……？」
「小１でやることだよな、それって……」
「つーかそんぐらいできろよ……」

nadiatims Wrote:I just tried again, ”怒ったんじゃなかった” in quotes gets about 3 million hits, and "死ぬんじゃなかった” gets 1 million hits. Am I doing something wrong?

Google is a liar. Just scroll to the last page.

As I mentioned the first time it was mentioned on the first page, I don't think 死ぬ is considered a nonvolitional verb. I'm going by what Magamo said and what I skimmed through. I didn't bother looking deeply into it because of the reasons mentioned on the first page about ‘usually’ and descriptive grammar.

At any rate, the Japanese Wikipedia article for 動詞 says:

意志による分類 [編集]
* 意志動詞 (volitional verb) - 人間などの意志による動作を表す動詞。希望・可能・命令・禁止などの形をとれる。
* 無意志動詞 (non-volitional verb) - 意志によらない動作などを表す動詞。希望・可能・命令・禁止などの形態をもたない。

Which would imply that even if non-volitonal verbs sometimes take the imperative form, it's not considered standard. Not to mention, it seems to imply that Japanese grammarians also make this distinction.

できる as a nonvolitional verb (can do) is supposedly one where you can't use it as volitional, imperative, or potential. Is this not the case?

Are いる/ある considered nonvolitional verbs, iSoron? I see いる (need) listed.

I see いる/ある mentioned as stative, but I don't think they're nonvolitional?

JSL explains this as being two separate できる. One is nonvolitional, the potential of する. The other is volitional and means something like "to complete" or "to finish".

宿題できた doesn't mean "I was able to do my homework", it means "I finished my homework". (This one can occur with を even in prescriptive usage). The Daijirin has 11 different definitions for できる, some of which are volitional and some of which aren't.

You can probably find imperative forms for some of the verbs that are technically non-volitional but seem to straddle the fence in actual usage, such as いる（居る) and 分かる.

Also, re: Thora and catsup, that stuff like ジェーンが日本語が分かる can be read as having a transitive construction with 分かる, where 日本語 is the object, is pretty common among Japanese linguists, as I read it.

Example: “Japanese has a small class of verbals, all stative, that mark their object, as well as their subject, with the particle ga.” - Susumu Kuno

Another is Kageyama (see Sadler p. 11 via last link: “A number of scholars argue that this construction is transitive... ”).

Also see: On the non-canonical double nominative construction in Japanese: The particle ga as an object marker

For more see previous links, but it should be basic logic that shows you that it's different from the usual English subject.

Shibatani critiques the idea of it as an object/transitive construction in the .pdf I linked to and repeatedly referenced, talking about the large/small subject (and see also Sadler/Kumashiro on the topic, as previously noted), and sees the double subject/dative subject/possessor ascension stuff, through analyzing things like volition, as an intransitive construction, where it's not the usual English subject. It's actually commonly broken down into some easy to understand elements with regards to describing states/possession/control/etc., over the decades, from linguistics to basic grammar texts.

I guess if people don't want to consider the transitivity or volitionality of verbs, that's their prerogative. I can't imagine going through Japanese without factoring in another descriptive layer of common themes and categories beyond some coarse, rigid, simplistic idea of subject and object case markers. Even for linguists who disagree on the syntactic definitions, they seem to have a consensus with regards to the consistent patterns and awkward constructions, defined on the level of things like volition. That type of information is highly accessible (and widely applicable). Hence its place in DOBJG.

Here's another informative link that I referenced by title but didn't link to before: http://books.google.com/books?id=2lp5QTqZv6IC

@iSoron

Also, 理解する・喜ぶ aren't nonvolitional in your examples either. ;p I believe する verbs aren't nonvolitional, and that's not the nonvolitional ‘be pleased’ meaning of 喜ぶ, is it? I think that's ‘accept’ or something? I don't want to go through and find exceptions, though, as if I'm trying to proscribe/prescribe usage.

Random sentences found with google search...

できる：
俺も英語出来たいなぁ

知る：
男女の心理学知りたい
外の世界を知ろよ 馬鹿たれ

見える：
マッチョに見えたいなら
もう少し、近くが見えたい、中間が見えたいなどのご希望 ...
見えろよ左目!!見えろよ!!

聞こえろ：
心の声、聞こえたいか？
南無は愛の形で : 聞こえろよ！

間違える：
若い間にたくさん間違えたい。
おい、たまには演奏間違えろよ

違う：
他人と違いたい

分かる：
西川貴教のファンレター住所が分かりたいです

ある：
笑顔でありたい
強い国であってこそ、誇れる国であれる。

いる：
ずっと俺の側にいろ
君の側にいたい…｡
友達でいる、良さは何？終わりなく、側にいられること。

似合う：
いつまでも、桃色が似合いたいよ（＾v＾）
「お前、もっと似合えよ。オレに似合えよ」と。
ゆるデニムが似 合える自分になれる。


疲れる：
脳が「疲れろ」と指令するから。
仕事に疲れた後さらに疲れたい人にお薦めの危険な宴会.
疲れたと言える位ならまだまだ疲れられるぜ.

yudantaiteki Wrote:JSL explains this as being two separate できる. One is nonvolitional, the potential of する. The other is volitional and means something like "to complete" or "to finish".

Weren't you criticising me before for pointing out two meanings for わかる as overly complicated? Now you're doing exactly the same thing...

The -たい form means what? ある/いる are far as I know aren't nonvolitional? So you're able to find a few hundred to a couple thousand abrupt command form instances per nonvolitional verb, in slangy contexts? I guess everything we've written and read is completely useless now. Amazing.

Making up a separate word for 分かる and then making up an excuse about it involving transitive meanings making it a new word, in order to avoid accepting that there are good analyses and explanations for this sort of thing that are widely applicable and accessible and perfectly logical, isn't the same as pointing out the multiple lexemes for the lemma できる to point out the consistency of those same analyses and explanations.

Explanations which may have occasional exceptions, as descriptive grammar tends to contain, being flexible as it is, a possibility that has already been pointed out repeatedly, so the desperate manufacturing of rare exceptions using Google uncritically as a corpus, even presenting the samples as if representative of some immense number in the wild, is a little, well...

Tzadeck Wrote:Not to mention, it seems to imply that Japanese grammarians also make this distinction.

I know that some people make the distinction; I'm trying to find out how useful it is. From my and nadiatims' examples, I don't think it can be used to reliable tell whether a verb can be used in potential and imperative forms, as pm215 said; so, it's practical usefulness is not yet clear, at least to me.

I actually think it does quite well at telling that -- the situation with 分かる is that in prescriptive grammar, you must say 英語が分かる, and you cannot say 分かりたい. But in actual usage, 分かりたい does occur and を is used with it as well.

This is because technically 分かる is non-volitional because you can't directly control whether or not you understand something. However, it's easy to see some volition involved in understanding, especially when you're talking about understanding something over the long term (as in 英語が分かりたい). I also think that 分かりたい and わかるようになりたい are not 100% equivalent -- I may be wrong, but it seems to me that 分かりたい has more of the implication that you want to understand right now.

As I said elsewhere, JSL uses the volitional/non-volitional distinction to explain ga and wo, -tai forms, -te oku, potentials, causatives, -te kuru, tsumori, and other things.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I actually think it does quite well at telling that -- the situation with 分かる is that in prescriptive grammar, you must say 英語が分かる, and you cannot say 分かりたい. But in actual usage, 分かりたい does occur and を is used with it as well.

Doesn't that just suggest that the prescriptive grammar is wrong? Are you saying that using を is technically wrong? Also the example of わかりたい I took from google is using が.

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is because technically 分かる is non-volitional because you can't directly control whether or not you understand something. However, it's easy to see some volition involved in understanding, especially when you're talking about understanding something over the long term (as in 英語が分かりたい).

Huh? So now you're saying わかる in 英語が分かりたい is volitional? I thought your entire point is that the object only takes が when the verb is non-volitional. Or are you actually admitting that in this sentence 英語 is the subject?

yudantaiteki Wrote:As I said elsewhere, JSL uses the volitional/non-volitional distinction to explain ga and wo, -tai forms, -te oku, potentials, causatives, -te kuru, tsumori, and other things.

I already addressed ga/wo, -tai forms and potentials but let's see what google sensei has to say about the others:

-te oku:
風邪で死んだらおとなしく死んでおくべきだね。
本当に見えておきたい作品が多いですね。
-causative:
「やさしいおばさん：聞こえさせてくれていた愛」
「日本を経済大国であらせるそのGDPの大きさ」
-te kuru
ちょっと死んできますね。
-tsumori
微妙に違うつもりにしたけどテラ黛藍。
とまらないからとめて 我輩は人間であるつもり

yudantaiteki Wrote:Also, a note on linguistic labels: They have to (a) correctly describe the language, and (b) serve a useful function. The problem with a lot of casual explanations is that they're circular.

Your label volitional/non-volitional doesn't seem to serve a useful function. Knowing the meaning of the words in question is an as good or better predictor of correct usage. How do you know whether a verb is volitional or not without knowing its meaning?

My description of WA/GA on the other hand simply and accurately describes the language, and serves the useful function of clarifying the arguments of the verb or predicate and how they relate together while raising little or no exceptions.

yudantaiteki Wrote:People will say "を marks the direct object", which is OK, but it immediately calls up things that look like exceptions (when viewed from English) like 道を行く or 離婚を悲しむ. Some people are then tempted to say "Well, those can be direct objects in Japanese", but now you've created a situation where "direct object" has no meaning except "something marked by を", and the result is a term that serves no purpose because the definition is completely circular.

を does mark the direct object. Whether an equivalent English verb is transitive or not is irrelevant. Entirely.

In languages like English and Japanese, there is no overt indication that a verb is or can be transitive. You can reach that conclusion once you see a direct object, and each verb has its own syntactical requirements that have nothing to do with its meaning. The notion of direct object is not semantic; it's purely syntactic.

を marks direct object. Period. It's not a circular definition. It's a fact.

OK, what's the definition of "direct object" then? (And are you saying 行く is transitive?)

Quote:-tsumori
微妙に違うつもりにしたけどテラ黛藍。
とまらないからとめて 我輩は人間であるつもり

WRT "tsumori", the distinction is that with non-volitional verbs, it does not mean "plan to" but rather "with the mindset of" or "thinking of it in this way".

(In the same vein, the -te kuru distinction is that the one meaning "comes to occur" or "begins to occur" showing the gradual change generally occurs only with non-volitional verbs, or at least verbs that are outside the control of the speaker.)

Quote:Your label volitional/non-volitional doesn't seem to serve a useful function.

You can keep telling yourself that.

Yes, 行く is transitive when it's used with を.

Usually transitive verbs can be converted to a corresponding passive, but you can't do that with 道を行く (i.e. you can't say *道が行かれる, or 道が行ってある). This is why JSL describes 行く as operational (i.e. volitional) but intransitive. DBJ deals with the issue by providing four definitions for を, the first of which is "marks a direct object" and the other three covering things like 道を行く.

Saying something like “を always marks the direct object” is circular and/or useless except on a rudimentary level, and is incorrect both syntactically and semantically, as we've seen. I don't know of many linguists or teachers who claim subject and object are static and universal across languages, nor any Japanese linguists or teachers who make such claims. Sometimes を marks something besides the direct object. Sometimes the direct object is marked by に or が. There are a billion variations on what you might consider a subject marked by が or を. Understanding these fluid dynamics in an easy, nuanced way is simple when you look at the basic definitions offered across books such as Japanese the Manga Way, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, A Dictionary of Japanese Particles, All About Particles, papers and texts written by linguists, whathaveyou. The most useless and controversial aspects are the syntactic arguments about determining object and subject status and trying to pin them down in a language. I find things like agency and noncontrollability to be much more agreed upon and functional descriptions of the language.

[edit: I wanted to stress that the grammar yddt describes in this forum is accepted stuff. The concepts are not some exotic JSLisms. JSL is known to be excellent for grammar. (It just uses it's own lingo which tends to isolate it a bit.) It seems Nest0r had aready slipped in with a pile of additional general references while I wasn't looking, though.]

AlexandreC Wrote:を does mark the direct object. Whether an equivalent English verb is transitive or not is irrelevant. Entirely.

In languages like English and Japanese, there is no overt indication that a verb is or can be transitive. You can reach that conclusion once you see a direct object, and each verb has its own syntactical requirements that have nothing to do with its meaning. The notion of direct object is not semantic; it's purely syntactic.

を marks direct object. Period. It's not a circular definition. It's a fact.

Another "fact" eh? :-) A different view is that verbs have both syntactic and semantic arguments. English has different kinds of objects. You could say verbs have syntactic object arguments and the different labels for those objects are semantic distinctions. The direct object is the object argument of transitive verbs. We don't consider prepositional objects to be direct objects, for example.

In Japanese, some prefer to make similar distinctions. So を　can mark different kinds of objects. It can mark direct objects of transitive verbs. It can also mark objects of intransitive motion verbs (some call transversal objects), objects of stative verbs, and words with multiple grammatical functions (accusative subjects). Taking the English term "direct object", changing its meaning, and applying it to Japanese sentences (which sometimes function differently) doesn't seem like an ideal solution to me. It's not even necessary.

The mixed use of terminology in textbooks and articles unfortunately can confuse some learners. But I don't think it's helpful to insist that every を-marked word in Japanese is a "direct object" or that　を alway indicates a transitive verb. That would be defining "transitive verb" in a way that is both circular and inconsistent with the behaviour of verbs.

This isn't just a theoretical distinction, it's very useful in teaching. If we teach that "を　marks direct objects" and "only transitives take を", students will soon be confused when they come across を with intransitives and を marking what they feel is location. Folks will turn to the English definition of "direct object" for some guidance which won't help. A better approach, in my opinion, is to maintain the English definition of "direct object" and simply point out the existence of other objects. A one minute explanation of transversal object will also help them understand the difference between を　and　に when used with motion verbs, which they need to know anyway. This isn't complicated. Most importantly, students appreciate it. That tells us something.

Returning to 分かる: 英語を分かる　and 英語が分かる　are both okay and mean the same thing. So is that syntactic or semantic? Is 分かる　transitive or intransitive?

[not specifically to Alexandre] Treating stative predicatives as a category helps avoid/explain these kinds of classification problems. Kuno calls stative verbs "stative transitives" to distinguish them from regular transitives. Someone else calls them "stative intransitives" to distinguish them from regular intransitives. Some just call them stative verbs. The label is not so important as understanding that as a group they share certain features and behaviour.

Incidentally, there are some linguistic theories that avoid the "syntactic subject vs semantic object" issue by assigning case according to certain pragmatic considerations and specific ordering rules. I mention this only to emphasize that it really is a matter of perspective/approach.

Quote:Period. Entirely. This is a fact.

Do these sorts of emphatic declarations add truth? ;p Grammar theory isn't about right and wrong. The terminology and their scope varies a great deal in one language, never mind across languages and across linguistic traditions.

I remember that some pragmatist--I can't remember which one--has an essay where he talks about his simple folk-psychology model of how humans accept or reject new ideas. You can imagine someone's ideas as a big sphere made up of balls of varying sizes. Ideas that are more central to someone's view of the world are closer to the center of the sphere. They are also bigger because they have a lot of influence. Balls near the surface are smaller and can move around more easily, and some fall off or are added on.

When someone is presented with an idea--a new ball--they can pretty much choose whether or not to take it in based on their deeper ideas, the bigger balls near the center. Over time you build up more and more balls to agree with your ideas, so it gets harder and harder to change the big balls near the center.

Like in most debate, that's pretty much what's going on here. If you take "を marks a direct object" as a major grammar idea in the beginning, you gradually accumulate evidence or balls that favor that interpretation. The idea becomes a big ball. You also exclude balls that don't favor this interpretation. So it's frustrating the side that I happen to be on, which is trying to give you evidence to the contrary, and you're not really accepting it.

Probably on our side we just never acquired that idea, and probably we have another idea such as "An object is anything involved in the subject’s performing of a verb, and the direct object is what the subject is doing the verb to.” And we of course have built up a system on this, and for us it’s more important than what is marked by を.

Now, you can use BOTH ways to adequately handle Japanese. As long as you can interpret and produce Japanese in a meaningful way, pragmatically the systems should be just as useful as one another.

But I’m not arguing some sort of grammar relativism—there should be something that’s more objectively correct here. The same pragmatist also talks about how the funny thing about humans is that they don’t really notice contradictions in their belief systems. So a person can hold a belief system with inconsistencies. And another thing is that if two systems work equally well, the system that solves the problem with the least number of exceptions and complexity should be adopted (i.e., Occam’s razor). Until recently, you could explain the movement of the planets in our solar system equally well with a heliocentric model or a geocentric model, so if all you’re interested in is the movements of the planets, you could use either. But one of them is a better system nonetheless.

So the questions you have to ask are 1) Do the two systems work equally well? (This could mean 'Do students who used one system do a better job at using Japanese with fewer mistakes?') 2) Does one of the systems have more inconsistencies? 3) Is one of the systems more complex?/Does it have more exceptions?

I actually don’t really care that much, since I’m only interested in learning the language—and as I said, in that case it doesn’t matter. The only people who are really invested in it more than that are linguists, because for them the interpretations can affect other problems in linguistics that they want to think about. And everything I’ve read by a linguist talking about Japanese, does not solve this problem with “を marks the direct object.” I’ve heard that said in a number of textbooks and the like, however.

(Note sure how this post really adds to the debate, it's just what I was thinking)

I see ... so does the model have a way to prevent people from showing off their big balls prematurely? ;p

If I were a better writer, I would have used a word other than balls.

...But my secret agenda is to derail this thread with testicle jokes.