Re: [tlug] Correct particle to use

["David J Iannucci" <jlinux@example.com>]

I don't think anyone will see this twice, but if so, sorry... also for
breaking the thread...
=======

> I asked the Japanese bloke who sits next to me at work and he said
> that hon ga/o yomeru are interchangeable and that he cannot explain
> the difference. I then went and asked two other Japanese here and they
> both said the same thing.

I'm surprised that in this whole thread so far, no one seems to have
brought up a theory that seems quite reasonable to me[1]: that we are
perhaps witnessing a historical change in process (these things take
time), in which all "objects" (more precisely, those participants with
a thematic role of "patient" or "theme") come to be marked with
を,
and most interestingly (or controversially :-), this change may be
occuring under the influence of English and other foreign languages!

This could be classified as an "analogical leveling", i.e. the smoothing
out of irregularities, such as we are seeing in colloquial English now
(at least American, which is all I can vouch for) with the merging of
irregular participial forms with plain past tense, and also changing of
some to -ed forms (I heard a singer just tonight sing "the sun shined"
rather than "shone"... but maybe he just needed a rhyme :-)

If this is the case, I would normally not expect to see forms such as
を好き so early on, because they have such high frequency of use
and が好き ought to be very deeply ingrained for this reason, but
then
maybe we haven't seen many good examples of such change in the era of
mass media. In any event, it would be expected during such a transition
period that native speakers will report that either usage is acceptable,
without necessarily being able to say why.

Now I'll sit back to watch the storm arise :-)

Dave

[1] Disclosure: I'm a Ph.D. student in linguistics.

p.s. Although I haven't actually subscribed yet, I do think it would
be best to move this thread and others like it to the lingo list.  And
actually, maybe "lingo" would be better cast as "off-topic", leaving
open the possibility of other "off" topics and keeping the main list
more clearly focused on linux tech.