kongmingtao Triglot Newbie China Joined 4928 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, Thai
| Message 1 of 4 06 September 2012 at 9:01am | IP Logged |
สวัสดีครับ ผมเรียนภาสาไทยโดยเขี ยนหนังสือการ์ตูน"ปัง อนด์"แต่ผมไม่เค่าใจ:
เด็กชายที่จู่งๆเงาขอ งเขาก็หายไปสร้างความ ตื่นเต็นแก่ผู้พบเห็น
ภาสาองกริดเรียกว่าอะ ไร
เด็กชาย(male child)ที่จู่งๆ(that suddenly)เงาของเขา(his shadow)ก็()หาย
ไป(lost)สร้าง(create)ความตื่น ต็น(excitement)แก่(to)ผู้พบเห็ น(people who find/see [him?])
I'm guessing this means, "The boy who suddenly lost his shadow creates
excitement/commotion to the people who see him." Is that the gist? If so, how does
the sentence work grammatically? ขอบคุฌมาก
(Also, if I should post this somewhere else, please let me know. I wasn't sure.)
Edited by kongmingtao on 06 September 2012 at 9:06am
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viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 2 of 4 09 September 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
สวัสดีครับ ยินดีต้อนรับในบอรด์น ี้ครับ
I showed your sentence to a Thai friend of mine (she’s an English teacher.) By the way, ปังปอนด์ means “bread loaf” for some reason. Anyway, she said it sounded as if the sentence had been translated from English. The term she used was สำนวนนมเนย or “milk-butter saying,” in the sense of being foreign.
It’s interesting to think about reasons for this. I’ve read that using ที่ to mark relative clauses is something that developed fairly recently, along with the use of การ and ความ to form abstract nouns (like การศึกษา “education” and ความเข้าใจ “understanding”). These are features of the modern written style that are usually perfectly fine, so what’s funny about our sentence here?
I think it has to do with the type of relative clause that the writer is trying to form. A more literal translation would be “the boy *whose* shadow suddenly disappeared…” I checked the “Reference Grammar of Thai” by Iwasaki and Ingkapirom, which has several pages on relative clauses with ที่. They give examples where the relative pronoun is the subject or object of the clause, and ones that correspond to English when/where clauses (“the day when I graduate.”) But there’s nothing with possessive meaning, like English “whose”.
About relative clauses generally, linguists who do typology have found that there is something called an accessibility hierarchy – in some languages, the relative clause marker might only be used for the subject or object functions (who/what), in others more functions like possessor are also possible. However, it’s rare or unknown for languages not to allow subject/object function, but have the possessor function. I’m basing this on R. Dixon’s “Basic Linguistic Theory” vol. 2.
So, this would explain why this sentence sounds awkward (and/or based on a foreign model) to native speakers. Thai has developed widespread use of relative clauses with ที่, but the language is still farther down on the accessibility hierarchy than English. Using a relative pronoun in the possessor function seems to be on the border line.
Also, my friend thought ของเขา could be left out, although this would still be a bit awkward. It might be fun to post this on lang-8 and get some more feedback from native speakers.
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kongmingtao Triglot Newbie China Joined 4928 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, Thai
| Message 3 of 4 10 September 2012 at 10:06am | IP Logged |
ขอบคุณมาก, Viedums! This is an amazing help!
So it would make ก็ be functioning in its role connecting the subject to the verb phrase
of the sentence, I guess?
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viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 4 of 4 10 September 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged |
I’m not sure about ก็ here – ก็หายไป sounds quite idiomatic to me. It might be there just for nuance. Also, I’m assuming there’s a pause between หายไป and สร้าง – if these were one unit, this might mean that his shadow intentionally left him to go and haunt people somewhere else. Hard to know out of context.
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