tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 25 21:20:26 1995
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Re: KLBC: Comparatives
On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Marc Ruehlaender wrote:
> jabbI'IDwIj yIlaD
>
> I've tried to express some comparative sentences:
When I was a beginner, I threw some similar questions at the BG. I had my
own novel (and grammatically awful) way of saying these. I think the
conclusion was that there are no perfect answers, only fairly acceptable
ones.
> I am as big as you.
> machHa'ghachlIj rap machHa'ghachwIj
> My-un-small-ness equals your-un-small-ness.
Although is it isn't very pretty, it is grammatically correct.
Another way you could say it is: {bItIn 'ej jItIn je} or {bItIn 'ej jIrap}.
> You are not bigger than me.
> SoH tIn law' jIH tIn puS 'e' temnISlu'
> one-needs_to-deny
That works. I would like to be able to say {SoH tIn law'be' jIH tIn
puSbe'} but I simply don't know whether it is legal to say that.
> I am two years older than you.
> cha' DIS jIH qan law' SoH qan puS
> ^^^^^^^^ is that sufficient?
To me, simply saying {cha' DIS} doesn't seem quite enough. But off the
top of my head, I simply can't figure out a perfect way to say this.
Perhaps a slightly less ambiguous way to say it is:
bIboghpa' qaStaHvIS cha' DIS jIbogh.
> Two thoughts on the 'less X than'-discussion:
>
> You are less old than me.
> QupHa'ghachlIj puS law' QupHa'ghachwIj puS puS
> Your-un-young-ness is fewer than my-un-young-ness
To me this doesn't perfectly solve the "less X than" question, I simply
see this as "my oldness is more few than your oldness". (It doesn't
sound very clear to me.)
> >From the usual sentence structure Object precedes
> Subject, wouldn't one infer that the original
> meaning of A Q law' B Q puS IS indeed B is less
> Q than A? That is you'd have to topicalize A to
> emphasize A is more Q than B?
I don't think one noun is the object of the other, it seems to be a
compound sentence. But the word order deviates from the normal word order.
This construction is simply idiomatic. You can't derive the meaning of
the sentence by just looking at the plain meaning of the words. It's an
exception to all the rules.
> Marc Doychlangan
yoDtargh