tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 08 04:19:34 1995
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re: relative clauses
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: re: relative clauses
- Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 07:18:18 -0400
>>>>Hebrew and Arabic shoot a phaser through this tangle of ad-hoc word
rearrangements Thus: the child wh- saw me; the child wh- I saw him; the
child wh- I gave him the phaser; the child wh- I took his phaser; the child
wh- I am bigger than him.
>>>>>>>>Yes; I always liked this arrangement. It's *very* flexible. I
sometimes translate the "wh-" particle as "which-is-such-that:" so we get"I
read the book which-is-such-that my aunt gave it to you yesterday."This
presumably allow[s semitic languages] to have pretty much *any* noun as the
head-noun of their relative clauses ("the man which-is-such-that: you know
his sister..." etc).<<<<<<<<<<<<
actually, spoken English contains a reasonably common construction that's not
at all unlike this -- only, the "wh-" or "which-is-such-that" is more or less
implied by its absence. (i could be wrong, but i think it's slightly more
common in UK English than in US English.) And, as you note of the semitic
languages, the antecedent noun can serve any function in the relative clause.
in written form, the construction would probably be best approximated by a
colon.
to wit:
(nominative) This man Fred: he went down to the store.
(akkusative) My dog: I gave him a bath.
(dative) Your mother: i wrote her a letter
(genative) Your sister: I drank her beer.
It would also appear that the article "this" or "that" often appears to
accompany the construction, if the antecedent noun isn't directly preceded by
a posessive pronoun. e.g.
This gerbil: she's about to give birth.
This perfume of yours: it smells great.
That goat's milk: it's not very good, is it?
but that need not always be the case:
The cat's food: a 'possum ate it.
Milk: it does a body good.
Obviously such a construction isn't typical of formal written English; but in
the spoken language, we hear it all the time . . . perhaps too freqently even
to realise it.
Qapla',
William
([email protected])