I came across this as part of a larger sentence:
あのせんせいってそういう人らしいね。
I am getting the gist of "that teacher seems like a decent person", but what is this って form noun construction? Is it just a contraction for an implied verb?
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2Why did you translate そういう as "decent"? – Chocolate♦ Aug 30 '16 at 15:04
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I didn't. I translated 人らしい as decent. – David S Aug 30 '16 at 15:06
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3It's そういう人+らしい, "seems to be such a person." 「そういう」="such~~, that kind of"「らしい」="seems like~~" – Chocolate♦ Aug 30 '16 at 15:08
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@chocolate I translated it the same as you, but when I look in jdict it does have an entry 人らしい which it claims means "like a decent person". It's not in my dictionaries and I assume it is nonsense. Am I missing something? – user3856370 Aug 30 '16 at 15:12
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5It's not parsed as 「そういう+人らしい」 but 「そういう人+らしい」. It's almost the same as 「そういう人+のようだ」「そういう人+みたいだ」"It seems like he is that kind of person." そういう is an adjectival phrase, so it can modify a noun, not an adjective. Here, it modifies the noun 人. We do have a word 「人らしい」, meaning "humane" ≂「人間らしい」「人間[味]{み}のある」, but it's an i-adjective. The adjectival そういう can't modify an i-adjective 人らしい, so you can't parse it as 「そういう+人らしい」. We usually use the i-adjective 人らしい like this: 「人らしい[行]{おこな}い」「人らしい[振]{ふ}る[舞]{ま}い」「人らしい感情」 – Chocolate♦ Aug 30 '16 at 16:01
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This って is simply a more colloquial form of the topic marker は.
answered Aug 30 '16 at 14:49
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日本語でコメント書いたから、英語で説明してくれてたのね・・気づかなくて、コメント書き直してしまった。。お手数かけてすみませんでした。ややこしくてごめんね～！ – Chocolate♦ Aug 30 '16 at 16:24
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@chocolate No problem. Your explanations are very much appreciated. – user3856370 Aug 30 '16 at 16:47
