tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 02 07:55:24 1995
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Re: conjunctions of more than two things
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: conjunctions of more than two things
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 95 10:55:20 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Alan Anderson" at Feb 2, 95 7:09 am
Again, this is well thought out. We have no more information
from Okrand on this than you do.
According to Alan Anderson:
>
> The only examples I find of conjunctions' usage involve exactly
> two nouns or sentences. I donUt see any clues about what to do
> with three or more nouns. I can guess, of course, but the result
> isn't necessarily going to be understood. Here are two ways I
> can think of to do it:
>
> "this, that, and the other" -> {Dochvam Dochvetlh latlh je}
> There's no particular reason this would be understood at all!
> The "noun-noun" pairs can be read as "noun's noun" far too easily.
> It gets even worse with more than three items.
I tend to agree.
> "this-and-that and the other" -> {Dochvam Dochvetlh je latlh je}
> At least this has a chance of getting the meaning across. I base
> it on my interpretation of "noun noun conjunction" as a particularly
> complex noun, but I don't claim to be interpreting it correctly.
> There are two ways I see to extend this construction to four or
> more items. {Dochvam Dochvetlh je Dochvetlh je latlh je} as sort
> of a "nested" scheme,...
YES!
> or {Dochvam Dochvetlh je Dochvetlh latlh je je}
> as sort of "heirarchically" constructed.
NO!
> This last one looks very
> bad as a general combination, but might be useful if I really wanted
> to combine other combinations like {DeS 'uS je mIn Ho' je ghap}.
This {A B je C je D je...} is my preferred way to do this. You
know that the first two words are not noun-noun constructions
because if they were, they would have no reason to be followed
by {je}. The two combined nouns then grammatically behave like
a single noun, so adding a third noun should work fine,
followed by another je. Remember that even in English, when we
say, "This, that and the other" the comma is merely replacing
an optional conjunction. We could quite legally say, "This and
that and the other".
This leaves open the option of really placing a noun-noun
possessive in the middle of of such a list without great
confusion (unless, of course, it happens in the first noun
pair).
Even if your first suggestion {A B C je} were ultimately judged
to be grammatically acceptable, I can't imagine this SECOND
suggestion {A B je C je} NOT being acceptable, and it is far
clearer in its meaning.
> Is there an official way to do this?
Nope.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI'
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