Sentence Structure


Every noun in a sentence has a special purpose. This purpose is called a roll, like a roll in a play. Every language has their own way of designating what nouns have what roles. In this lesson we will be dealing with four major roles. In case you are unfamiliar with some of these grammatical terms, I will explain them here:
Here are some examples of how English uses each of these roles. 
                 
                   The door     opened
                   /subject/    /verb/  

                   The boy   broke    the window
                   /subject/ /verb/   /object/

                   The students    went    to school
                   /subject/       /verb/  /destination/
Notice in these sentences, there are a few patterns that apply to all of them.
  1. The verb needs to come after the subject
  2. They all go subject-verb in a non-question sentence
  3. Everything else comes after the verb
Japanese has rules, too, but they are different:
  1. The verb needs to come after everything else
  2. Everything else is comes before the verb
  3. The subject comes before the object
  4. There must be a postposition after each noun in the sentence
A postposition? A postposition is a word that tells what role a noun plays in a sentnece. Here are the postpositions to the roles you already know:
Now, using just English words and the new Japanese postpositions you just learned, let's make some sentences according to the four rules Japanese has: 
                   The door      opened
                   /subject/    /verb/
This one is pretty easy. The verb is alread at the end so rule one is satisfied. Also, it has a subject, which in a Japanese sentece is optional and so rule 2 is satisfied. Remove the word "the" and since "door" is the subject, you add the subject marker "wa" after it. The result is:

Door wa opened.
Doa wa aita.

                   The boy   broke    the window
                   /subject/ /verb/   /object/
First off, we need to take the verb "broke" and put it at the end. We then have a subject and an object that come before it. We keep the subject in front of the object normally, though. Every language has it in that order. Then we remove the 2 "the"'s in the sentence. Lastly, we add the appropriate pospositions to both of our nouns. We add "wa" to "boy" (our subject) and "o" to "window" (our object). The result is:

Boy wa window o broke.
Otoko no ko wa mado o kowashite shimatta.

                   The students    went    to school
                   /subject/       /verb/  /destination/
We start off by putting the verb "went" at the end. We are left with "the students" and "to school" which are a subject and a destination. Remove "the" from the word "students" and add "wa" since it is the subject. "To school" though is a bit different. What is that "to" doing there? "To" is English's way to mark the destination of a sentence. It's a preposition, and so it comes before the word. Since Japanese marks it in a different way to mark word, we have to remove "to" during translation and add either "e" or "ni." We could say that "e" or "ni" are a translation for "to" but you have to put them after the noun and not before them. The result is:

Students wa school e (ni) went.
Seito wa kakkou e (ni) itta.

There are many other postpositions that act like English prepositions just like this last example. Once you understand how to use these four, the rest become very easy to understand. I will introduce new postpositions in later lessons as vocabulary words.

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