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36 The modifier consistently precedes the modified In Japanese, the core element of the sentence—the verb—appears at the end of the sentence. Likewise, the core of the noun phrase—the head noun—appears at the end of the noun phrase: Sensei-wa futsukayoi-de kyoo kimasen. “The teacher is not coming today due to a hangover.” sakenomi-no Eigo-no sensei “the tippling English teacher” This property is also part of the right-headedness of Japanese that we introduced in Unit 2. That is, if you write a sentence from left to right, you put a head noun at the end of a noun phrase and a verb at the end of a sentence. English is almost the mirror image of Japanese in that it is generally left-headed; a verb in English appears before the direct object, an adverbial phrase, etc., as shown below: Put the Playboy back in the trash. With respect to noun phrases, the left-headedness of English means that the head noun appears before the modifier, as shown below: picture of the president who ruled the company with terror shoreline beautiful enough to be praised by a poet the restaurant which was formerly rated four-star Altough simple modifiers appear before the head noun in English as in “your book,” “beautiful shoreline,” “Tokyo’s Shinjuku district,” and “cheap and good restaurant,” when the modifier becomes long, English speakers prefer the method of modification in which the modifier follows the head noun: restaurants in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo And if you are to use a slightly more complex modifier containing auxiliary verbs, the head noun must appear first: shoreline that was once beautiful (cf. *was-once-beautiful shoreline) shoreline that is no longer beautiful (cf. *is-no-longer-beautiful shoreline) 88 English thus is left-headed in general. Japanese, on the other hand, is consistently right-headed. The head noun follows every kind of modifier, as shown below: Tookyoo-no Shinjuku “Tokyo’s Shinjuku district” Tookyoo-no Shinjuku-no resutoran “restaurants in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo” yasukute oishii resutoran “a cheap and good restaurant” itsumo wakai hito-de ippai-no yasukute oishii resutoran “a cheap and good restaurant always full of young people” For this reason, no matter how long the modifier is, resist the temptation to place the modifier after the head noun in Japanese. You will see the importance of this principle again in Unit 37. Checking your comprehension: What is the head noun in the following phrase? Does it mean a kind of university, or a kind of name? daigaku-no Eigo-no kyooju-no namae How about the following? Is the head noun the town or the station? tonari-no machi-no ookikute atarashii eki How would you translate the following into Japanese? Consider what modifies “friend,” what modifies “university,” and what modifies “professors”: psychology professors at my friend’s university For related topics, see also Units 2, 34, 35, 37, and 41. 89 ...

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