Memoirs of a Dork: August 2006

I don't really know why I didn't think to post this in the first place, but I figure I should share a list of some of the common terms that I'll be using in future blogs from now on.

1. ACCUSATIVE: The case of a direct object of a verb. In English, this is also called the OBJECTIVE. An example of this case would be the word you in the sentence "I see you."

2. ADJECTIVE: Words that modify (thus the other term for them, MODIFIERS) a noun by giving it some tangible or intangible quality, such as a new car or a smart student. New and smart are adjectives.

3. ADVERB: Words that describe the way in which an action is done or modify an adjective. He talks quickly. He is trying to sell you this really nice car. Quickly is an adverb describing the way in which he talks, while really intensifies the condition or the appearance of the car (nice or in other words, in good condition). Unfortunately, Native English-speakers have a tendency to misuse adjectives in place of adverbs--i.e., He talks fast (when it should be he talks quickly).

4. ARTICLE: Short hand for DEFINITE ARTICLE and INDEFINITE ARTICLE.

5. AUXILIARY: Think HELPING VERBS, if you can remember your English classes from your days in public school. These are verbs like be, can (be able + infinitive, could), do, have (+ past participle), must, ought to, should, would, etc.

6. CASE: The form that a word takes in order to determine it's grammatical relation to a sentence. English has only three cases, which are rapidly falling into misuse: the nominative (subjective), the objective, and the genitive (possessive). The best way to illustrate these is through examples of pronouns. I is the first person singular pronoun in the nominative (or subjective) case, while the objective case is me and the genitive (or possessive) becomes mine, my, or of me. In other languages, such as Greek, Russian, or even Latin, the change in case is determined by suffixes added to the noun or pronoun, while others, such as Japanese, use particles after the word to show it's grammatical relation.

7. CLAUSE: One single sentence by itself, or a part of a more complex sentence that can be broken down into smaller sentences. Take the sentence I went to the store. This is an entire sentence (or clause) by itself. Now take the more complex, I went to the store with my friend who is an ex-murderer. I went to the store with my friend is one whole sentence, while who is an ex-murder is another.

8. CONJUNCTION: Words like and, but, because, etc.

9. DATIVE: Also known as the INDIRECT OBJECT, which is basically a noun or a pronoun that, in English, usually comes after the direct object of the verb and takes the preposition to, such as They gave the book to me as a gift. To me is the dative.

10. DEFINITE ARTICLE: This is the word the. It restricts the object under discussion to one specific item. Compare the house to a house. The house refers to a specific house you have in mind, while a house could be any house. Spanish is more selective about it's use of this article as well as the indefinite article, while languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Russian lack both articles.

11. DIRECT OBJECT: See ACCUSATIVE.

12. GENDER: English no longer uses gender, but in Indo-European languages like Spanish or Russian, gender affects nouns, pronouns and adjectives. In Spanish, for example, libro (book) is masculine like mesa (table) is feminine. In Russian, on the other hand, a third gender exists called the neutral (Spanish has a neutral, too, but it is less common), which is distinguished by their endings: -o and -e predominantly, but also -ye (or -ie), -'e, -'yo, or -mya.

13. GENITIVE: Also called the POSSESSIVE in English. Usually formed by adding 's after the noun (John's book) or placing of between the pronoun (or other noun) and noun (The book of John). Pronouns in this form in English are "my," "mine," or "of me," "your," "yours," or "of you," "his," "his," or "of him," etc.

14. INDEFINITE ARTICLE: These are the words a and an. It's that simple. For more information, see DEFINITE ARTICLE.

15. INDIRECT OBJECT: This is the "to me" in the sentence, "They gave the book to me as a present."

16. INFINITIVE: This is the unconjugated form of the verb, that is, it has no tense and no number. This in English is the preposition to plus an action. To think, to see, to talk--these are all infinitives. In Spanish these are divided into three classes depending on the suffix: -ar, -er, and -ir. In Japanese, these end with -u, -ku, -gu, -su, -tsu, -nu, -bu, -mu, and -ru. In Russian, these end with -t'.

17. INTRANSITIVE VERB: These are verbs that do not take an direct object, such as walk or die. Only the subject is involved--you cannot say "He died her" (to talk explicitly about giving her the action of dying, you would say he killed her, or if you wish to talk about her dying [expectedly or unexpectedly] in his presence, you would say she died on him. Provided that you don't take it literally, in which case this could also come to mean, she died on top of him, like she was lying on him when she died or fell on him and died).

18. NOMINALIZATION: Using the verb as the subject of a sentence, which is usually done in English by using the gerund (-ing form)--i.e., Reading is good for you. In Spanish, this can be formed by placing el before the infinitive, or by using an equivalent noun--i.e. El leer es bueno para ti or La lectura es bueno para ti. In Japanese, this is formed using no or koto depending upon the context and is used in a very different way from English or Spanish. No sounds less formal and generally refers to a subjective experience, while koto sounds more formal and is a general truth that applies to everyone, not just the speaker. Yomu no ga tanoshii desu or Yomu koto ga tanoshii desu. Likewise, the sentence using no can be fairly ambiguous because the sentence can also mean, "The one [the person] who reads is good."

19. NOMINATIVE: Also called the SUBJECTIVE in English and is the subject of the sentence. In English pronouns, the nominatives are I, you, he, she, it, we, you [all], and they.

20. OBJECT: Short hand for the ACCUSATIVE or DIRECT OBJECT.

21. PARTICIPLE: Usually either the PRESENT PARTICIPLE (or GERUND) or the PAST PARTICIPLE. The present participle is the form of the verb ending with -ing (killing, burying, crying), while the past participle is the form of the verb that usually ends with -ed (killed, buried, cried), but don't forget that there are irregular ones, too, like bought, seen, fallen, etc. The present participle usually follows a conjugation of the auxiliary verb be (I am killing, you are burying, we are crying) while the past participle usually follows a conjugation of the auxiliary verb be (I have killed, you have buried, we have cried).

22. PASSIVE: More common in English. Every verb has an active and a passive voice. Tell is the active while be told is the passive. The active is, well, more involved in the action while the passive causes the subject to receive the action. There is a difference between saying I tell the truth (that is, I am directly involved in telling the truth) versus I am told the truth (or, in other words, someone has told me the truth, so in reality I have only listened to another person tell it to me). In Spanish, this form is usually used only in the third person and is made by placing a reflexive pronoun before the conjugated verb. Perhaps you would be more familiar with it if I told you that the se habla of the expression Se habla español ("Spanish is spoken") is the passive, or possibly even the question ¿Cómo se dice passive en español ("How do you say 'passive' in Spanish?" or even more literally, "How is 'passive' said in Spanish?"). It sounds less direct. Japanese has a passive, too, but its usage is somewhat non-sensical in English. I cannot resist, however, sharing a sample form of the verb. I'll choose my favorite verb in this form: wasureru, which means "to forget" or "to leave behind." Simply drop the -ru and add -rareru to give wasurerareru (be forgotten). Japanese even goes as far as to use a causative passive form of the verb. To make it short, the causative form would be saying "make OR force [someone else] to do someone" or "let OR allow [someone else] to do something." The Causative Passive form is wasuresaserareru, or be made to forget. I feel compelled to also mention that the passive form of this verb is also used in Japanese with this same class of verbs to express a potential.. so wasurerareru also means "can" or "be able to forget," depending on the context.

23. PERSON: The number of people involved in an action, expressed via pronouns. The first person singular is I, me, my, mine; the plural is we, us, our, ours; the second person singular is you, you, your, yours; the plural is identical since English no long distinguishes it; the third person singular is he/she/it, him/her/it, his/her/its, his/her/its; the plural is they, them, their, and theirs.

24. POSTPOSITION: In language that have a SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB word order, these are what are known as prepositions in English. Where we say in English in Japan in Japanese they say Japan in (日本で, nihon de).

25. PREFIX: Parts of words that cannot be broken down (called MORPHEMES) that are attached to the front of a word, such as the auto in automobile, or even the self in the hyphenated self-esteem. In fact, auto means self, too. Just think about the word automobile, if you break it down you have auto (self) and mobile (moving), or in other words, something that moves by itself. That would make perfect sense for the Sino-Japanese equivalent jidousha (自動車), since "ji" means "self," "dou" means "move," and "sha" means "cart," so literally, a "self-moving cart."

26. PREPOSITION: Words like in, about, around, of, over, on top, inside, outside, etc. See POSTPOSITIONS for rules for other languages.

27. PRONOUN: Words that take place of proper pronouns, or basically, people's names. Instead of having a conversation like, "Veronika is so hot. Isn't Veronika hot? I think Veronika has the hots for me" we could simply use the name Veronika once and replace her name with she. There are also relative and interrogative pronouns, which are the same in form (who, what, where, when, why, how) but used differently. Interrogative pronouns are used as their name suggests: to ask questions--Who are you? What are you doing? From where did you come? When did you get here? Why are you here? How did you come here? Relative pronouns, on the other hand, connect two different clauses. I am the one who killed her! Japanese does not have relative pronouns, but there are other ways to communicate the same idea, usually through placing the relative clause before the main clause (English: the book that I read yesterday was interesting vs. Japanese: yesterday read book interesting was), or as in the example above, koroshita no wa watashi desu ([Her] killed person me is).

28. REFLEXIVE: The agent (doer) of the action does the action to himself. Reflexive pronouns in English are myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. The neutral is oneself. These, likewise, are misused in English. You are more likely to hear a native English speaker say "I love me" instead of "I love myself," which is technically the grammatically correct way of saying it. These are fairly uncommon in English but far common in Spanish. Where we say in English I brush my teeth in Spanish they say Me cepillo los dientes or literally, "I brush myself the teeth."

29. ROOT: The basic form of a word without any prefixes or suffixes attached to it. The root of the word talked is talk, or killing's root is kill, and so on. Also called STEM.

30. STEM: Usually refers, at least, in my mind, to an adjective, adverb, or verb. Same as ROOT

31. SUBJECT: The agent or doer of the action. Usually in the NOMINATIVE.

32. SUBJUNCTIVE: An almost archaic form of the verb in English that is usually used to express an action that is contrary to the fact. This is often misused in English as well. We might say "I wish I was in another place," but we should actually be saying, "I wish I were in another place," because we are wishing it, but we are not really there and it's currently impossible for us to be in another place. Another example of a subjunctive expression in English would be saying "May [a specific action occur]" as in, well, "May so-and-so rest in peace." The subjunctive is far more common in Romance languages. Spanish technically has three subjunctives, but only two are used in modern Spanish. Portuguese has three. French.. I don't know.. Italian, I believe, has two. So on and so forth. However, the Spanish subjunctive is usually used in a way to express one's desire that another person perform a specific action, that a contrary-to-fact action or condition be real, to directly command another to do something, to express an action that is doubtful, or, even information that is already known to both the speaker and the listener but is not the focus of the subject. I will probably share an article I am currently translating on the matter very soon here.

33. SUFFIX: the -ed and -ing that are added to verbs are examples of suffixes.

34. TENSE: Determines the time in which the action occurs. Spanish has twelve tenses plus four moods (or six if you add the third nearly-extinct subjunctive), while Japanese has only two true tenses plus several other moods. English, well, I'm not exactly sure about, but to provide some examples, the English verb to talk in the present simple tense is I [do] talk or It talks while in the past simple tense is I did talk or I talked. So on and so forth.. I'm not super researched on English grammar, but when it comes time that I might have to (heaven forbid), I'll update this.

35. TRANSITIVE VERB: Verbs that take a direct object, such as see, have, punch, etc.

36. VERB: Action words, like speak, sleep, drink, eat, sing, yell, etc.

37. VOICED: Sounds that are made by the vibration of the vocal cords. Vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are always voiced, while only some consonants are always voiced (b, d, g, j, k, ...).

38. VOICELESS: Consonants that are not produced via vibration of the vocal cords (f, h, p, t, x), etc.

Memoirs of a Dork

Monday, August 07, 2006

When in Rome...

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Linguistic Lingo