nairi Posted September 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 (edited) Okay since no one is answering to the "puzzle", here's what's interesting (of what I know): obviously, as you guessed, "one" refers to "cook". But if we change the sentence a little and say: Sip met the student of CS and Azat the one of Art. it's not grammatically correct. Right? Now try the same thing in Armenian and see what happens. style_images/master/snapback.png Nobody wants to give this a try? This is one problem to solve. Actually it gets pretty complicated in technical terms, but I think you can give a simplified, intuitive answer as well which will pretty much cover the technical answer. Maybe you already got this far with the English version: - the cook from X - the student of X both are nouns followed by a preposition and another noun. Maybe you went a little further and found that the prepostion and the following noun kind of belong together: - from X - of X and that "cook" and "student" could easily function on their own: - Sip met the student/cook and Azat met the student/cook. Although a strange sentence semantically, it is grammatically correct. So what's up with "from X" and "of X"? Why are they not interchangeable? Aha! Because "from" is simply a different preposition than "of". Different preposition, different function. So far, so simple. One step further? We now know that "noun of X" must form one "phrase" or constituent (as we'll call it). However, we also saw that this noun can function on its own when "of X" is ommitted. So really the equation should be: - noun + of X On the other hand, "noun + from X" does not form a constituent. It is made of two constituents, namely "noun" and "from X", so: - noun + (from X) Are we still making sense? Don't know. Here's a simple tree to illustrate how this might work: NP / \ / \ / \ / \ Det N' | / \ | / \ the / PP N' / \ / \ P \ / \ | \ / \ from \ / \ NP / PP | N / \ California | / \ student / \ P NP | | of Art NP = Noun Phrase N = Noun N' = embedded NP PP = Prepositional Phrase P = Preposition Det = Determiner The N' is the one that can be replaced by "one" in phrases like: - The one from California. [meaning: the student of Art] or - The one. [meaning: the student of Art from California] So how the hell would this work in Armenian?? I think we first need to decide on how to "translate" these sentences into Armenian.. Taking into account that inflectional endings = prepositions in a language like English. Maybe Harut can help us... Edited September 23, 2004 by nairi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nairi Posted September 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Btw, I don't know the answer (yet) to the Armenian version. But maybe we can figure it out together.. First we need someone to translate these two sentences into, let's say, Standard Eastern Armenian (it's a pretty logical variety -- easy to figure out mostly). However, the more versions, perhaps the more interesting. Who wants to give it a shot? It's not that hard. Sip met the cook from California and Azat met the one from New York. Sip met the student of CS and Azat the one of Art. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anileve Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Nobody wants to give this a try? This is one problem to solve. Actually it gets pretty complicated in technical terms, but I think you can give a simplified, intuitive answer as well which will pretty much cover the technical answer. style_images/master/snapback.png Athough I am completely lost, that's freaking impressive woman!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nairi Posted September 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Ani, you'd probably be even more impressed to know that you too know all that!! The only difference is that you might have a little more trouble formulating it (leave that up to linguists ). Moreover: you know know much more than this simplified equation!! If you didn't know even a bit of this, you wouldn't be able to speak English! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bellthecat Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Moreover: you know know much more than this simplified equation!! If you didn't know even a bit of this, you wouldn't be able to speak English! I don't know about that - I haven't any idea what an "embedded NP" or "Prepositional Phrase" or "Determiner" is, but I can still speak pretty good English when I want to! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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