164 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLESjust quotes, as the following examples should illustrate:”(I/you/he/she/it/we/they)’re thinking about buying a car.””Let’s think of (my/your/his/her/its/our/their) weakness(es) as (one
of my/your/his/her/its/our/their) strength(s) (instead).””(I/you/he/she/it/we/they) consider (my/your/his/her/its/our/their) hobby
(my/your/his/her/its/our/their) work.”What is actually doing is marking all these things – the quote
, thevolitionalact , the concept , and the activity- as somehow being adverbial to the verbs in question; , , ,
and. The actual interpretation of what is doing depends entirely on
the interpretation of what’s being marked adverbial, and the interpretation
of the verbs used. For instance, means ’to say’, but it can also mean ’to
call’. As such, we can actually translate our first sentence in two radically
different ways:
”He said he’d be right over.”
”He was called Imaiku.”The second translation sounds quite unlikely, but if we replace
with , we get exactly the same possible translations:”He said ’Tanimura’.”
”He was called Tanimura.”Suddenly the first translation sounds quite unlikely, although noth-
ing really changed.
So how does differ from , the direct object marker? Actually,
sometimes we can use either. For instance, is proper use of
, is also possible. However, for some verbs the meaning
changes radically when we use , as opposed to when we use. A good
example of this is the verb , which we looked at in chapter 2, in the sec-
tion on important verbs. This verb changes its meaning from ”to become”