Request for English>Japanese translation and language info

[Synchestra]

Hi everyone! I'm studying linguistics at university in Australia and for one of my assignments I have to find a Japanese translation of a sentence, as well as some information about the Japanese language. I was wondering if you guys could help me

The sentence for translating is: 'The boy roasted the fish that he caught.'

(I have no knowledge of the Japanese language, so if you could translate using the Roman alphabet rather than hiragana, katakana or kanji that would be great )

I'd really like to know:

a) the meaning of each word in the translation, and the meaning of each part of any words that are compound or have any prefixes or suffixes on them (e.g. the meanings of all the morphemes, if you've studied linguistics)
b) how you express the English simple past ('roasted' and 'caught') in Japanese
c) how you express the relative clause. The phrase 'that he caught' is a relative clause in English, which means that the phrase is dependent on the first part of the sentence ('the boy roasted the fish') and the relative clause marker is 'that'. I'd like to know how Japanese expresses this idea.
d) the order that words occur in an Japanese sentence.

Thank you all so much Please ask me if anything's not totally clear.

Thanks again in advance,
Andrew Muratore

[andylaurel]

I'll have a go here... seeing that no one else has...
男の子は魚釣りした魚を料理した。
Otoko no ko wa sakanatsuri shita sakana wo ryouri shita.
a)
Otoko no ko - boy
sakanatsuri suru (past tense is shita) - to catch a fish
sakana - fish
ryouri suru (past tense is shita) - to cook

I'm sorry, I don't know the verb 'to roast'

b) The simple past in Japanese is expressed by conjugating the verb into the 'ta' form. The two verbs in this sentence are a combination noun and verb. Sakanatsuri being the noun, suru being the verb - to do.
A normal verb such as 'eat', (taberu) can be conjugated into tabeta - ate.

c) I think the relative clause is added before the noun, with no joining particle. sakanatsuri shita sakana (the caught fish)
Someone might like to correct me here.

d)As for the boy the caught fish cooked. (notice that the pronoun "he" is not mentioned as Japanese don't seem to use pronouns all that often. "he" is implied)

Please note that the verb "to roast" has not been used, as I don't know it.

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by andylaurel

男の子は魚釣りした魚を料理した。

I'm afraid I don't think any native speaker would ever say that. The 魚釣りした魚 part sounds very redundant.

The most natural way to say this would be:

男の子は自分で釣った魚を焼いた。

The fact that we use the word 自分 here is linguistically significant as basically in all Indo-European languages, one would use the third-person pronoun instead.

[andylaurel]

I didn't think I was right,
I posted that without the supervision of my Japanese girlfriend. It was a bit of a shot in the dark.

I thought about using the verb 焼く in the translation, but up until this point I thought that was somewhat reserved for 'to fry' as opposed to 'to roast'.

What line of work are you in Nagoyankee? You're explanations are fantastic.

[Synchestra]

Nagoyankee (or someone else), could you translate that into romaji? I can't read Japanese alphabets

Also a couple more questions just to make sure I understand:

'Shita' is the past tense of 'suru' which is 'to do', right? And you can add this verb onto some nouns to make verbs?

In the verb 'sakanatsuri suru', 'sakana' is 'fish'. What does the 'suri' particle do?

What do each of the particles in 'otoko no ko' mean? Do they have seperate meanings at all?

Thanks for all your help so far, everyone I've headed over to the English forum a couple of times to see if I could help out but you guys seem to have everything pretty much covered.

[alanX]

otoko no ko wa jibun de tsutta sakana wo yaita

[Synchestra]

Sorry to be a pain, but since I'm inquiring about linguistics rather than the Japanese language (I don't speak Japanese at all), I really need to know the meanings of each particle and how the sentence is structured

[kirakira]

Originally Posted by Synchestra

Sorry to be a pain, but since I'm inquiring about linguistics rather than the Japanese language (I don't speak Japanese at all), I really need to know the meanings of each particle and how the sentence is structured

The sentence can be broken up into 3 clauses.
(男の子は)(自分で釣った)(魚を焼いた)。

男の子 otokonoko - Boy
は wa - Topic marker particle modifying "Boy", i.e. Boy is now the topic of the sentence. This idea of a topic marker does not exist in English.
自分 jibun - Oneself
で de - Particle indicating means, modifying "Oneself". Translates literally to "Through the use of oneself", interpreted as "by oneself/by himself".
釣った Tsutta - Vt verb, past tense meaning "fished"
魚　sakana - Fish
を wo - Particle indicating object of a trasitive verb, in this case, it is modifying "fish"
焼いた yaita - Vt verb, past tense meaning "cooked"

- Japanese particles modifies whatever PRECEDES the particle
- Clauses can be modified by other clauses by simply stringing 2 clauses together
- Word order in Japanese does not matter as long as the clause ends in a verb (and the right particle is assigned to the right word)
- The idea of a "phrase" does not exist in Japanese as all a Japanese sentence require is at least one word. If the subject/object/verb can be understood from context, it is omitted but the sentence stays grammatical.

男の子は - As for the boy
自分で釣った - Fished by oneself (modifying the next clause)
魚を焼いた。- Cooked fish

In English, "The boy cooked fish which he caught (himself)."

[chryuop]

Question: Can 自分 be substitute by 一人で in this case?

[Synchestra]

Thank you, Kirakira, that was extremely helpful.

I also like the fact that people who are learning Japanese are using my question to further their own understanding of the language. Makes me feel like I've contributed some small amount here instead of just showing up and demanding information