I cast aspersions on the claim by Samuel E. Martin that he heard
someone on NHK use a particular grammatical form August 25, 1968.
Let me hasten to set the record straight here. I am not actually
engaged in a vendetta against Prof. Martin. That's a joke. I take his
word for what he heard on August 25, 1968, and also what he heard
about Santa Claus, in another part of the book . . . which I cannot
find, because the book is 1198 pages long. He says he heard the
information about Mr. S. Claus from a 5-year-old Japanese female
native speaker -- surely a well-informed and authoritative source --
so I believe it.
This book, "A Reference Grammar of Japanese" is monumental. I expect
it is the most complete and authoritative description of any
language. That's my opinion, and it is shared in the blurbs on the
back from J. Asian Studies, J. Jap. Studies and so on.
I just looked up Martin and learned that he died last year:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-294.html
I never met Prof. Martin. I have heard he was nice person. I learned
Japanese language, anthropology, history, and Chinese history and
anthropology from his colleagues, including some of the other people
mentioned in this obituary, such as Jordand and Chaplin, and from
various other people from WWII and occupation era. As it says here:
"Like so many of America's Japanologists in the post-war period,
Martin had worked as a Japanese Language Officer during World War II . . ."
That group includes Supreme Court Justice Stevens, by the way. He
worked as a cryptologist at Pearl Harbor. He was part of the group
who broke the code that led to the assassination of Adm. Yamamoto. I
assume Stevens must speak Japanese; most of those folks did. The
Japanese used codes, not cyphers, so you had to know the language to
some extent to crack the codes.
I mentioned the NHK weekday weather lady, Ms. Sae Nakarai, who I
believe may also have used the hortative Literary Tentative verb
ending. Yes, right there on National TV! She was born well after
1968. She wears a different outfit every evening thanks to the
costume department at NHK, and she describes the weather in
beautifully enunciated Japanese. See:
<http://www.nhk.or.jp/news7/caster.html#caster03>http://www.nhk.or.jp/news7/caster.html#caster03
http://pub.ne.jp/asisland/image/user/1229121926.jpg
Fetching, as I said, but I expect that Prof. Martin would agree with
me -- and with the other dozen people in the English speaking world
who know what the heck I am talking about here -- that her use of
this verb ending is a subject of intense interest, never mind the
outfits. Indeed I recall with pleasure a debate about that particular
verb form with reference to weather in a memorable discussion
sometime around 1972! (The year Ms. Nakarai was born. I don't recall
the exact date, and unlike Prof. Martin, I did not keep file cards on
such things.) It just goes to show that, someone, somewhere, will get
worked up about any subject. Not just worked up; emotional. Upset.
Linguists and physicists and baseball fanatics will get into
life-long feuds about subjects so picayune that people outside the
discipline have no idea what the argument is about. No subject is too
trivial to excite the human imagination, and to inspire decades of
work to produce a 1198-page Magnum opus that only a handful of people
will ever read.
"A Reference Grammar of Japanese" is one example. I fear the
assembled ICCF conference proceedings, to which I have devoted a good
many years of my life, may be another.
This raises an interesting existential question. Are these unread
tomes a monument to the human imagination and our astounding ability
to observe and report facts? Or are they a waste of a human life: a
dusty, trivial, unread, pedantic book about a subject that most
people would find so boring it paralyzes the imagination. It is hard
to say. I doubt that any practical use will ever come of Martin's
book. I like to think that all knowledge is useful and there is no
fact not dignified and made worthwhile by the very act of discovering it.
Still, I hope that the knowledge in the ICCF volumes is put to some
practical use.
Sometimes things which seem esoteric turn out to have a practical
use. Take the knowledge of Japanese grammar and language. You
wouldn't think such a thing would have any practical use or
real-world importance. Yet Martin, Keene, Bloch, Jorden, Stevens used
that esoteric knowledge to break codes, win the Battle of Midway,
assassinate Yamamoto, and help kill 2 million other Japanese people.
These people were very fond of Japanese culture & language and had
many Japanese friends (and spouses in some cases), so they had
profoundly mixed feelings about this -- as do I, of course. I guess I
would not call that outcome "dignified" or "worthwhile." I hope that
the knowledge of cold fusion can be used for more constructive and
peaceful purposes.
- Jed
