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Forwarded message:
From daemon Thu Jun  9 17:09 CDT 1994
Message-Id: <199406092217.AA02377@world.std.com>
From-Uucp: frankston.com!Barry_Caplan
From: Barry_Caplan@frankston.com
To: bptatro@trans2.b30.ingr.com
Cc: insoft-l@trans2.b30.ingr.com
Subject: Re: insoft-l Parallel translations: ordering of adjectives
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 1994 18:17 -0400

I think this is a facinating question. I have wondered about similar things
myself, both in English and Japanese, and the relation between the two (i.e
How do English words get converted into Japanese kana.)

Because there are two languages involved, and two sound systems, my thoughts
have leaned less towards a definitional reason, or a language centric one. I
think the reason is more one of speaking efficiency, to coin a term. By this,
I mean that the amount of mouth and mouth-part movement is minimized within
the language's sound system by a native speaker. Try it if you want - be
aware of how your lips and cheeks and toungue moves as you say your 2
phrases, and again as you reverse them.

Maybe this is why words and phrases that use legal sounds but become tongue
twisters are shied away from. Learning the few Japanese toungue twisters I
know seemed much easier than I expected, because the sounds are simple and
identical and repeated for an english speaker. The tricky part comes from the
grammatical construction, which if you either don't know or know very well
(internalized) there is no problem. But English toungue twisters, such as
"She sells sea shells ..."  require subtle mouth movements in rapid
succession to form the sounds correctly - any mistakes and you get the wron
sound, and therefor the wrong meaning. BTW, the Japanese word for these
expressions is "hayaguchi", meaning "fast mouth". Note the subtle difference
between this and "fast mouth".

Also, as I write this, I am thinking that maybe there are sounds rhythms that
are pleasing somehow to a native speaker in a rhetorical sense. As a native
English speaker, I prefer certain types of lists, be they adjectives, nouns,
phrases, or larger parallel constructions in threes. Soething else would seem
awkard under some circumstances. I am almost certain this is language
dependent ( or at least language family dependent.) Other types of
constructions that sound awkward in english, but can be used in other
languages to get the point across include double (or greater) negatives,
frequent use of similes, metaphors, and other rhetorical devices based on
language and culture relationships that I can only imagine.


--
============================================================================
Brian Tatro
Senior Editor
Product Translation		COMPUSERVE: 72154,531
Intergraph Corporation              bptatro@trans2.b30.ingr.com