tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 19 06:31:59 1994
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Apposition
- From: [email protected] (Mark E. Shoulson)
- Subject: Apposition
- Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 18:24:43 -0400
- In-Reply-To: Heidi Wessman's message of Mon, 18 Jul 1994 17:57:44 -0600 (MDT) <[email protected]>
>From: Heidi Wessman <[email protected]>
>Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 17:57:44 -0600 (MDT)
>I would have thought that
> Sarai be'nalDaj'e' To Sarai, his wife
> -or-
> Sarai'e' be'nalDaj To his wife, (of which being Sarai)
>If one or both are incorrect, why?
Well, neither has the "-vaD" for "to", so your translations puzzle me. The
first is correct, and it means something like "it is Sarai's wife who..."
(as in ""Sarai" be'nal'e' vIlegh": "it is Sarai's wife that I see").
Actually, the "-Daj" makes that not work: "Sarai's his/her wife"... it
almost makes sense, and probably has a use in a strange set of
circumstances, but it's definitely tough to understand.
The second cannot be a noun-noun construction, since only the second noun
in one of those can take a type 5 suffix (p. 31).
If you're looking for the "to Sarai his wife" noun-in-apposition method, I
really think you should use "Sarai"vaD be'nalDajvaD". After all, you have
these two nouns that are supposed to be the same, they're supposed to
occupy the same case in the sentence... they should be flagged the same
way. If I said ""Sarai"vaD be'nal"... that wouldn't be grammatical as a
single noun phrase, and it doesn't make much sens to me intuitively.
""Sarai" be'nalvaD", of course, means "to Sarai's wife". Think about the
reduploicated method: "To Sarai, to his wife". Makes eminent sense.
That's why I used it in my Jonah before this was even discussed here. It's
only when there aren't type-5's to help out that I start to worry.
>------------------
>chuQun
~mark