确认

[aone]

simply in the fact that this is a question

[陳德聰]

Implied "if" is a pretty standard thing:

A, 就B = If A, then B.

 

and even sometimes:

A, B = If A, then B.

 

I thought that #2 and #3 were quite clear and to the point, what exactly is wrong with referring to this here as "final confirmation"?

 

我们将参展表格发传真给您就是（参展的）最后确认了吧？

我们把参展表格发传真给你算是（参展的）最后确认了吧？

 

Us faxing you the Attendance Application Form would be the final confirmation (of attendance), right?

 

The original sentence is just as "vague" in that it leaves out "of attendance", but this is clearly implied by the sentence in both English and Chinese.

[Pedroski]

Yeah, it can always get confusing or vague when things are taken without their context. This is sill a lot of implying in one sentence, implied 'ifs', implied 'of attendance'. Are people just too lazy to say what they mean? Or is it a plot to drive me crazy?

[aone]

Giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive, why use that many words? This is so called concise（言简意赅）.

[陳德聰]

Chinese is just a highly contextual language. The more you study it the more you will realize that there is little use for repetition of words or ideas that are already tangible parts of the common discourse (i.e. The conditions and concepts that constitute knowledge common to all parties involved).

[Altair]

 

There is no 'if' in '请问，我们将参展表格发传真给您就是最后确认了吧？'but in the translation, we need an 'if'. How does this come out of the Chinese.

 

This is sill a lot of implying in one sentence, implied 'ifs', implied 'of attendance'. Are people just too lazy to say what they mean? Or is it a plot to drive me crazy?

It is definitely a plot to drive us all crazy.    For instance, I am surprised by the phrase 发传真.  I can't find it in my Pleco dictionaries, which use other expressions.

 

For a more technical answer to the question of the missing "if," I can maybe add an explanation.  While a simple reference to an implied "if" is a good way to explain the sentence in question from an English point of view, Chinese works differently with its topic-comment structure.

 

 

Remember that Chinese verbs have no tense markings and so generally make no distinction between any of the following:

 

finite and non-finite forms (conjugated verbs vs. participles or infinitives)

realis vs. irrealis (statements of facts vs. something else)

indicative vs. subjunctive.

 

Therefore, a phrase like 我们发传真, taken out of context, can "mean":

 

"We fax"

"We are/were faxing"

"Let's fax"

"For us to fax"

"Us to fax"

"Us faxing"

"Our faxing"

"That we fax"

 

In other words, the Chinese phrase does not actually mean that anything is being faxed at all, but just refers to the idea of the act.  How it should be construed depends on the rest of the sentence and the discourse context.  This is what we generally mean by "context," but I would argue that discourse structure is actually part of the grammar of Chinese and is not merely "context."

 

Consider a sentence like this:

 

我们把它发传真给您就是最后确认了吧?

 

Here, the phrase 我们把它发传真给您 serves to set up a "topic" for the following "comment."  Some grammars treat topics and comments as an interesting oddity, but linguists have proposed that it is actually part of the basic sentence structure of Chinese and much more important than looking at so called subjects and predicates that feature so importantly in many European languages.

 

A somewhat literal translation of the sentence above would be: "With us faxing it to you, that is final confirmation, right?"  Notice that the factual status of whether the fax has occurred or will occur is not what is being commented on, but rather what such an event would constitute in terms of confirmation.  If the status of the topic is not clear, you can always add a 如果 or a 要是, but this is often not necessary or even too specific.  In fact, in this case, the Chinese sentence fits the situation better than an English sentence with an "if" clause, since the comment applies whether or not the fax has been or will be sent.

 

 

[陳德聰]

If information structure can be presented as being part of a grammar I don't see why discourse structure couldn't be,

[Pedroski]

Thanks for that, I find it highly interesting, as I am an opponent of much of Western Grammar and what it purports to show. The comparison between English and Chinese reveals a lot about the habitual nature of syntax. Maybe, simply due to the fact that Chinese is older, the filter of years has refined it to its current level of information density. Chinese either never had, or has removed much of the 'baggage' which  English still has. When I can read Chinese reasonably, I will read some old texts, to see how they compare.

 

Also, Chinese never had the old Greeks and Romans interfering in the language. They did not increase the clarity of the language, which in my opinion is the function of grammar. (I would define grammar as language fashion.) English has discarded most case, case endings and noun or adjective declensions. It is slowly getting to where Chinese always was!

[陳德聰]

Mm... language change is generally cyclical. The definition of grammar in linguistics is a bit more specific and useful than "language fashion". Being opposed to Western Grammar (whatever that means) would be fine if you actually knew what it was first... English makes use of common discourse as well, it just isn't as obvious because it doesn't do it with the same pervasive flavour as Chinese. Chinese is not the only highly contextual language that exists.

[Pedroski]

Well, an example of Western Grammar might be your use of the concepts Present Continuous and Present Perfect, or Grammatical Tense.

 

How would you define 'grammar' in Linguistics?

 

There is a book by Professor Herman Fränkel called 'Grammatik und Sprachwirklichkeit' published 1974 in München. I don't know if it was ever published in English. He wanted to radically change grammar, but he was up against Newton's 1st Law I think: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

 

No one wants to apply that force.

[陳德聰]

Grammar is the set of rules of any given language. I think we've gone over this.

 

The concepts you mention are relevant to certain languages and not relevant to other languages, but their use in one language or lack in another is not basis for their legitimacy as concepts. They are not concepts from "Western Grammar" they are concepts from Western linguistics. Grammatical tense and aspect are not controversial as far as I am aware.

 

You can't "radically change" linguistic grammar because it is descriptive not prescriptive.

[Pedroski]

I can't agree that grammar is a set of rules. 'Grammar' at best is a description of how language is used. This includes so many exceptions to any 'rule' that it seems to me rather pointless to call any of the observations 'rules'. They are tendencies.

 

If 'grammatical tense' exists, why is it possible to use the so-called 'Present Tense' to refer to the Past, the Present (a wholly undefined state) or the Future?

 

If  Aspect exists, why are The Past Perfect and the Continuous Aspect both continuous by nature?

[imron]

'Grammar' at best is a description of how language is used.

So you agree with 陳德聰 then?

...because it is descriptive not prescriptive.

[陳德聰]

I want desperately to believe that it is a language barrier here. "Grammar", as used in prescriptive contexts, which is exactly what you describe when you say "so-called 'Present Tense' [referring] to the Past", is not the same entity as the concept of grammar that essentially forms much of the foundation of linguistics. If you can't wrap your head around that, then really, you need to stop commenting on grammar and linguistics in general.

 

The "Past Perfect" is not an aspect. "Past" is a tense and "perfect" is an aspect. The construction that combines the two is not universal (as in, it does not appear in every language), and even so, there is no way that you know what the "Past Perfect" is if you think it is continuous by nature... Continuous/Progressive is an aspect, and Perfect is an aspect. It's totally fine that you don't get that, you don't need to get it in order to learn languages. But you definitely should try getting it if you want to ever make any sort of coherent comment about it.

[Pedroski]

You will find many references to the 'Past Perfect Aspect', but I am happy with saying 'Perfect Aspect'. I would like Perfect Continuous Aspect even better. Or leave out 'Aspect' altogether. The fact is, these 'Aspects' describe two different things: 1) using 'be' is a description of something or someone. 2) using ;have' is a decription of what someone or something has. They are looking at different things, not looking at the same thing from a different view point, which would be an 'Aspect'.

 

A lot of the problem with so-called grammar is the inherited nomenclature. Present Tense is a good example. We almost never use the Present Tense to talk about now. Statements such as 'Water boils at 100C‘ have no time. You probably would not say 'Today water boils at 100C.'

 

Time is not always important to a statement. Professor Fränkel's proposal for this was to call the Present Tense 'Flarent',  an artificial word which brings with it no connotations of 'now'.

[陳德聰]

You are incorrectly interpreting the word "aspect". Why don't you try understanding the concepts that the so-called "inherited nomenclature" refer to rather than what you think they refer to based on your literal reading? "Present" is the name of a tense. Present tense and present time are not the same thing. This is how I know you are misinterpreting the concept by using the literal reading and your misunderstanding of the word "tense". I imagine a simple google search would relieve you of that. Statements such as "water boils at 100*C" may be "timeless" in that they are true all the time, but the verb gets present tense nonetheless. You can argue that the present tense shouldn't be called "present" tense, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If the sentence were tenseless, it would be "water boil at 100*C". The fact that English uses the present tense to express universal-truth-type situations is not really all that mindblowing, especially if you already know that nobody ever said present tense is only ever used to express "now".

[Pedroski]

tense："form of a verb showing time of an action or state," early 14c., tens "time," also "tense of a verb" (late 14c.), from Old French tens "time, period of time, era; occasion, opportunity; weather" (11c., Modern French temps), from Latin tempus "a portion of time" (also source of Spanish tiempo, Italian tempo;

 

I would say 'Tense' in Present Tense = 'time'.

 

aspect: "way of viewing things," from Latin aspectus "a seeing, looking at, sight, view, countenance, appearance," from past participle of aspicere "to look at," from ad- "to"  + specere "to look"

 

I would also say 'aspect' is your 'viewpoint'. If I look at a mountain, and then at the sun, these are not aspects, because the object I view is not the same.

[陳德聰]

How about using actual real-life definitions rather than etymology and your random musings on what you think things mean? There are specific definitions used in linguistics, which are the ones I use when I talk about linguistics. If we're going to just use any old folk nonsense you thought up on the spot, then I might as well just burn my school down.

 

For your reference:

Grammatical tense

 

Grammatical aspect

[Pedroski]

The definitions I presented above are not mine, they are from www.etymonline.com , a very good dictionary in my view.

 

I will now quote your sources: (wikipedia being a somewhat challengeable and unreliable source)

 

"In grammar, tense is a category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place."

 

The key words here are 'locates a situation in time' I will translate that for you: 'tells us  the time when the event or state takes place'. In short, tense = time.

 

"the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to (but has continuing relevance at) the time of reference: "I have eaten"; "I had eaten"; "I will have eaten"."

 

When you have something, you continue to have it, until someone or something takes it away. Thus, both 'I am' and 'I have' are continuous by nature. I call this durative state.

 

What 'I have' is not what 'I am'. Thus it is not true that the Continuous and the Perfect are aspects,  like looking at the sun, and then at a mountain. The sentences 'I am sleeping.' and 'I have slept.' describe different things, much the same as 'I am a teacher.' and 'I have a teacher.', neither of which are aspects of 'teacher'.

[陳德聰]

Etymology is not lexicography, and your etymology dictionary explicitly states that it does not give definitions.

 

I gave you Wikipedia because you seem to lack fundamental understanding, which is something that Wikipedia is able to help you with. I understand English, arguably better than you, but thank you for your "translation". I'm a bit unsure as to what your point is?

 

Having continuing relevance and being "continuous" (a term whose definition is already in use to describe a specific characteristic of verbs) are not the same thing. If you're going to try to talk theory you need to use precise language and be able to at least navigate existing frameworks. You can make up your own definitions but to have any kind of meaningful discussion you need to be able to interpret the dominant ones. Each example you just gave "I have eaten", "I had eaten" and (to a much more questionable extent) "I will have eaten" are illustrations of the same aspect in different tenses. None of which are continuous/progressive aspect, as the act of eating is not ongoing at any of those time references. If there is anything that can be called "continuous" it would be the nature of the verb "have" regardless of its tense, since it is a stative verb. But then it is the state rather than the aspect that is contributing to what you erroneously call the "continuous" nature of the perfect aspect. Also, why come up with a term like "durative state" when "state" is already in popular use?

 

Your last paragraph is just a huge non sequitur. A =/= B, thus (C ^ D) =/= E. Also, aspect is something that is marked on verbs, so your comment about "teacher" strikes me as a bit inane.

Either way, the question you originally asked here involves a phrase that does not include a time reference nor any aspect marking (in the first half), and can be seen as equivalent to a noun phrase in that it's just like English "faxing" which alludes to the act of faxing rather than being in the process of faxing.