vega12 wrote:
Ž„‚ÍA—¼e‚Æ‚¨ŒZ‚³‚ñ‚ÌŠwZ‚ÉŽÔ‚Å‚P‚OŽž‚És‚‚ñ‚¾B
Note that this is read more like the originally phrased English sentence. However, is the underlined part ambiguous in that it can either be taken to mean "to my parent's and brother's school" or "with my parents, to my brother's school"? I so, how are these ambiguities resolved if there's not enough in the sentence to move it to a less ambiguous place?
The simple answer is that you are perfectly correct and that the above sentence
can mean both of those.
However, because the situation would be so rare (what I mean is that, your parents would have to be entering university
very late in their lives or they would have to be teachers at your brother's school) that the most probable of the two is that you are going "to your brother's school
with your parents, unless prior context indicates otherwise.
Of course, the way to get around that is to restate the sentence:
Ž„‚ÍA
‚¨ŒZ‚³‚ñ‚ÌŠwZ‚É—¼e‚ÆŽÔ‚Å‚P‚OŽž‚És‚‚ñ‚¾B
However, both of these sentences are, for the most part, unambiguous in Japanese (for the reason stated above), and either are acceptable.
As for sentence order itself, it doesn't make that much of a difference in Japanese, in terms of stress. In languages such as Russian, for example, you are correct in saying that the final element of the sentence is the "important" or "new" information. This happens in Japanese to a certain extent as well, but it is very subtle, and you won't get funny looks should you put something in a different order.
What makes this rearranging possible is the existence of "case marking" in Japanese. These are usually referred to as "grammatical markers" or "particles" in textbooks, but we linguists call them "case markers." It is these markers, rather than sentence order, that gives sentences free word order (except for the verb) in Japanese.
I won't go into depth, but other languages that employ case marking include Russian, German, and many others.
To answer supermidget's question about whether the following is okay or not:
??Œ©‚éAƒeƒŒƒr‚ðB
Albeit strange, it is found in daily language, although not in a non-question phrase that you would hear someone saying.
Two situations that I can think of seeing this would be 1) in advertisements; and 2) when someone is asking a question.
I have heard and have used myself the question form, uŒ©‚éHƒeƒŒƒr‚ðBv or uˆù‚ÞH…‚ðBv. Although intonation plays a big part in the way it is said, it is possible to have these constructions. I suppose they may be considered separate sentences then, but that's another post :beaten:
A little word about ambiguity - it exists in all languages, but context is what decides what is meant in the end by the speaker.
A famous example is the "un- -able" phenomenon in English.
Take the noun phrase:
an unlockable box
Does this mean a box that can be unlocked or one that cannot be locked?
(You know when you find stuff like that
fun that you are a geek :beaten: )
HTH,
‘‰¤š