fractured grammar tales

Isn't the 着 in 看着 or the 了 in 看了，verb conjugation, at least, for tense?

Oh, you could also say that 嫁 versus 娶 is conjugation according to the gender of the subject.

Hi mark

> Isn't the 着 in 看着 or the 了 in 看了

That's a good point. It may be said that they are a kind of "weak conjugation", hehe.

> you could also say that 嫁 versus 娶 is conjugation according to the gender

This is not the case, unless you prove 嫁 (jia) and 娶 (qu) are originated in the same word.

Ok, maybe, 嫁 and 娶 just sort of rhyme with conjugation. Presumably, the young couple both attended the same ceremony, but a different sound is used to describe what they each did. It seems a similar idea to conjugation, and there are some irregular conjugations where it is hard to see the relationship between the different forms, like say, "go" and "went" in English.

Hi mark

> like say, "go" and "went" in English.

This is really a good example for supporting your theory. Do you come up with other cases/examples of "conjugation based on gender" in Chinese?

The key to this seems to be in homosexual marriages. What verb is used when a woman marries a woman? What verb is used when a man marries a man? That is, is the verb dependant on who's doing the marrying or who one marries?

To speculate some more, here's my theory on the etymologies of 嫁 and 娶. Note that the first is generally used with 给, to give. I'm thinking it was originally 家给 and 取. That is, a woman gives a home to a man (把家给男人), whereas a man takes a woman (取女人). The pronounciation changed over time and the woman radical was added to both words to indicate the new meaning. And, of course, since 家 had become a verb, the 把 was no longer needed.

All of the above, of course, adjusted to older language (maybe you didn't even need the 把 back then?).

If this personal theory is close to the truth, it's two different words and not any kind of conjugation. Of course, I'm just pulling things out of my ass here; I have no idea if this makes any sense at all.

Hi simon

You really are a clever guy. As you expected, the original character of 娶 was 取, and later 女 was added to 取 in order to make its meaning clear. As for 嫁, one of my dictionaries defines it as "把男子家就当作自己的家". The character 嫁 strongly connotes the relationship between a woman and a house/family.

As you pointed out, it's obvious that 娶 and 嫁 are two different words both etymologically and phonetically. Mark also admits this, and he cleverly brought up "go" and "went", which are also originated in two different words, just like "be" and "is". So we have to find other reasons to deny mark's claim. I'll leave it to you, hehe.

Hi simon

> What verb is used when a woman marries a woman? What verb is used when a man marries a man?

That's a good question. You can use the word 结婚 in modern Mandarin, but the two characters still have the part 女 in them (I guess you don't like it). Fortunately, the single character 昏 was interchangeably used with 婚 (marry) in ancient times. 昏 sounds neutral, doesn't it?

P/S. 结合, which doesn't have 女 part, also means "marry" in modern Chinese.

Changye, are you saying that neither 嫁 nor 娶 would be useable for a homosexual wedding? Of course you could use 结婚 or 结合, but what I'm really interested in is whether 嫁 means "to marry a man" or just "to marry someone", but only applicable if you're a woman.

Anyway, the question of whether one can consider it "conjugation" is a largely philosophical one. At any rate, it's certainly "conjugal", which is close enough for me.

Hi simon

It seems to me that “嫁” means "a woman marries someone", and this doesn't necessarily mean "a woman marries a man", at least the character doesn't contain the part "男", so on second thought, theoretically (but not traditionally) you can use "嫁" when a woman marries a woman. By the same token, you can use "娶" when a woman marries (get) a woman. In short, both "嫁" and "娶" can be used for lesbian marriage, but not for gay marriage.

> At any rate, it's certainly "conjugal", which is close enough for me.

Nice joke!!

If you accept the following definition of conjugation, I think I have made my point that the concept exists in Chinese, but it is not used much. However, my command of Chinese is insufficient to come up with more examples of gender influencing verb choice.

Proposed definition of conjugation: Take temporal context, or who is performing the action into account when choosing what verb, or verb form, to use.

(BTW my academic background is in math. So, my attitude is that once you get the definition right, the proof follows easily.)

Anyway, anyone else have any candidates for grammar concepts that exist in English but not in Chinese, or visa-versa? Or do you want to argue my definition?

Hi mark

Let me show you an interesting pair of characters that might support (?) your theory, i.e. 嬲 (niao3) and 嫐 (nao3). Both characters means "harass", and the former has a woman (女) placed between two men (男), while the latter has a man (男) between two women (女). These characters are really well made and vividly describe "ancient harassment".

I imagine (groundlessly) that in ancient times, 嬲 (niao3) was used to describe a man harassing a women, while 嫐 (nao3) was used when a woman harasses a man, although I'm not so sure. If this were the case, the pair of characters would be another example of conjugation (?) in Chinese. Fortunately, they have similar pronunciations.

P/S. Dictionary-wise, 嫐 is merely the variant form of 嬲, and they basically have the same meaning.

Mark: I have several candidates, that I wrote yesterday. The threading may have prevented you from noticing them. They're at the bottom.

Hi mark

I think I found another possible candidate for "conjunction" in Chinese, which seems to fit your definition of conjunction, namely "take temporal context, or who is performing the action into account when choosing what verb, or verb form, to use." What do you think about this pair of words?

买 (mai3) = buy (action by a buyer)

卖 (mai4) = sell (action by a seller)