4 ms·

Somewhat possible but not particularly plausible. Japanese is a SOV language, so the verb generally goes at the end. You couldn't move that all the way to the

Somewhat possible but not particularly plausible. Japanese is a SOV language, so the verb generally goes at the end. You couldn't move that all the way to the front. The "subject" can be implicit and Japanese also distinguishes between the overall topic, marked with 'wa', and the actual subject (i.e., the agent that does something). There's a fairly neutral order for many other parts of the sentence components. You can shuffle them around a bit, but it ends up changing the emphasis. As a rough analogy, you normally put size adjectives before colours: "I caught the big red balloon." Inverting this either sounds wrong or puts emphasis on the other adjective: "I caught the red big balloon" suggests that "big balloons" are a distinct category known to the speaker.

wlerin 2y ago
While it is true that basic sentence components like direct objects or phrases that modify the verb can be moved around without changing the meaning of the sentence in Japanese, there is a very strict head-final requirement for phrases and dependent clauses that modify nouns that makes larger sentences, especially heavily nested ones like the OP's example, virtually guaranteed to flow the opposite direction of the equivalent sentence in English. Said example contains two dependent clauses, one inside the other. In English, dependent clauses and phrases come after the noun they modify ("suit [that] I saw", "shop that is"), while in Japanese they must come before (「見たスーツ」, 「あるお店」). Thus the resulting translation is an exact mirror of the original. This head-finality opposing head-initiality is the main reason Japanese sentences tend to flow in the opposite direction of English ones, rather than simply SOV vs SVO. (The same also applies to the order of words within ホテルのむかいに vs. across the street from the hotel, I just don't know of a convenient single phrase to describe both constructions).

wlerin 2y ago

While it is true that basic sentence components like direct objects or phrases that modify the verb can be moved around without changing the meaning of the sentence in Japanese, there is a very strict head-final requirement for phrases and dependent clauses that modify nouns that makes larger sentences, especially heavily nested ones like the OP's example, virtually guaranteed to flow the opposite direction of the equivalent sentence in English. Said example contains two dependent clauses, one inside the other. In English, dependent clauses and phrases come after the noun they modify ("suit [that] I saw", "shop that is"), while in Japanese they must come before (「見たスーツ」, 「あるお店」). Thus the resulting translation is an exact mirror of the original. This head-finality opposing head-initiality is the main reason Japanese sentences tend to flow in the opposite direction of English ones, rather than simply SOV vs SVO. (The same also applies to the order of words within ホテルのむかいに vs. across the street from the hotel, I just don't know of a convenient single phrase to describe both constructions).