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On the Meaning and Usage of the Japanese Particle “No” and How to Translate it into Chinese This paper aims to examine the grammatical function as well as the semantic role of both genitive particle “no” and formal noun “no”. The first chapter is devoted to studying the genitive particle “no”. As a genitive, “no” merely has the grammatical function of linking adjectival modifiers to the nominal head without indicating either the semantic relation between the modifier and the head or the syntactic type of the modifier. As a result, the genitive particle “no” often takes place of the nominative particle “ga”, or the accusative particle “wo”, which means that the use of “no” in the relative clause will neutralize the grammatical distinction of the nominative “ga-phrase” and the accusative “wo-phrase”, thereby rendering these phrases to become pure modifiers in these situations. Furthermore, “no” occurs not only after nominals such as nouns, pronouns, quantifiers verbal nouns, adjectival nouns, nominalized verbs and adjectives, but also after onomatopoeia, mimesis, postpositional phrases, so as to mark them as modifiers of the head noun. On the other hand, “de” the counterpart of “no” in Chinese, occurs after nouns, pronouns, loan classifiers, relative clauses and appositional clause, but never (or only rarely) after mimesis and prepositional phrases. Thus, in translating the last group of Japanese nominal modifiers into Chinese, either predicate verbs are to be added, or some other adjustments are to be made. The second chapter discusses the formal noun “no” occurring after a complement clause, which turns the entire clause into a nominal, thereby enabling it to take particles such as “wa”, ”ga”, “wo” and becoming the theme, subject or object. In contrast, a Chinese clause can directly function as subject or object, without taking a formal noun. Moreover, it is not common in Chinese to begin a sentence with a long and heavy clause. As a result, a long and heavy clausal elements occurring in the sentence-initial position in Japanese tends to be translated into two independent Chinese sentences by separating the complement clause from the principal one and by using a personal pronoun or other grammatical devices in the principal or complement clause to establish semantic or anaphoric relationship between the two sentences. The third chapter concerns the “noda / nodesu” occurring after the complement clause. The addition of “no” after a declarative sentence turns the latter into a nominal, thereby downgrading an independent sentence into a complement clause and further indicating the speaker’s modality of indirectness or reservation with regard to the prepositional content of the complement clause. In these sentences, modal adverbs and final particles are often used to indicate the speaker’s modality, but when translated into Chinese appear which lacks any formal noun, only the relevant modal adverbs and final particles in translation. Furthermore, this sentence pattern occurs more often than not in a formal or honorific style. Therefore, in order to fully translate the subtlety of the speaker’s modality, the translator must make efforts to indicate the speaker’s modality of indirectness or reservation in an appropriate manner.
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