tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 23 21:08:01 1995
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Relative clauses
On Thu, 23 Feb 1995 [email protected] wrote:
> >Let me try a different approach; what do you think of:
> >'u' Sepmey'e' luSovbe'lu'bogh pa' jIleng.
> >"As for the unknown regions of the universe, I travel there."
>
> Interestingly enough, this lies at the very heart of the issue of the nature
> of -'e', i.e., topic or focus. I myself am not on top of the issue, being
> merely a 17-year-old of no one's time nor consideration,
<snip>
qarbe'. lo'laH vuDlIj. pIj qechmey QaQ Damuch.
<snip>
> but I had a
> conversation with d'Armond Speers, in which we dealt with this issue, and
> this very type of construction arose. It was "As for the Ferengi, I sold him
> a phaser" {verengan'e', ghaHvaD pu' vInob}. Earlier, Nick had mentioned to me
> that the {ghaHvaD} may be omitted, despite the fact that it also neglects to
> indicate the relationship of {verengan} to the verb (as a dative syntactic
> marker), because many languages allow for such ambiguity. d'Armond was not
> inclined to agree with this, and I suspect that it may have to go either way
> without Word from Okrand.
I recall having a similar discussion with Nick on this same subject.
That discussion, as with so many others, ended with the stalemate: We
need further clarification from Okrand. <sigh>
[...]
> d'Armond also suggested a reprieve to allow {verengan'e' pu'} as a N-N
> construct, accidentally forbidden in TKD where it says no type 5 suffixed
> noun may be first in a N-N.
Just another example of a construction for with we need to look to Okrand
for a ruling. <argh!> (My list of questions for the guy is getting
rather lenghthy!)
[...]
> A side note: if -'e' is topic, then we may even be dealing with things like
> {jIH'e' jIlujpu'}. Just a thought.
It's interesting you should mention that example. On p. 29 of TKD, we
have {lujpu' jIH'e'}. Can someone tell me why the verb {luj} in this
example uses the null third-person verb prefix?
> Guido
yoDtargh