Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 05:31:32 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711011031.FAA28771@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: "Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}" Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}" Subject: Re: terminators X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Robin Turner's message of Fri, 31 Oct 1997 18:26:30 +0200 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1189 Lines: 28 >>>>> "Robin" == Robin Turner writes: Robin> The closest Robin> I've found is Chinese, which employs a few terminator-like Robin> structures, e.g. "yinwei ... suoyi" for causation Robin> (normally rendered into English as "because ... therefore Robin> ..."). This is not a good example of terminators. That's because the "yin1wei4 A, suo3yi3 B" can be replaced by "A, suo3yi3 B" without removing the causual relationship. Moreover, the same idea can also be rendered as "B, yin1wei4 A". So, the use of the phrase connectives "yin1wei4" and "suo3yi3" both at the same time is just an example of reinforcement, which is frequently found in Chinese. For examples of terminators, how about postpositional languages, such as Korean and Japanese? Aren't the postpositions terminators by themselves? -- Lee Sau Dan 'u&u40(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) .----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sdlee@cs.hku.hk | `----------------------------------------------------------------------------'