tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 08 13:03:29 1996

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partitives

[peghuH -- teHbejbe'bogh pab vIqeltaH 'e' vInab.
tlhIngan Hol Dalo' neH DaneHchugh, bIlaD 'e' yImev.
SaghuHmoHta'!]

I wrote a phrase yesterday that made perfect sense at the time, but 
when I reread it I find that it doesn't have any canon support.  It 
still makes sense to me, however, and might shed some light on how 
(or whether) we can express partitive meaning with numbers.

My phrase was: {"8mm" lo' pagh jupwI' Sum}.  I intended it to mean 
"None of my nearby friends use 8mm [videotape]".  The "none of my 
friends" meaning is what caught my eye today.  Canonically, this might
have to be interpreted more like "my zero friends", but I think the 
use of the type 4 noun suffix makes it ambiguous.

Is {cha' Dujchaj} "two of their ships" or "their two ships"?  Both 
interpretations are sensible, so that doesn't help much.  But try 
{Hoch qamDu'vam} -- "all of these feet" or "*these all feet"?  This
is a bit less ambiguous, and it seems to lend support to a possible
partitive use of numbers before nouns.

I'm not yet quite sure I understand the correct meaning of the terms
"existential" and "presuppositional" in this context, but I think that
type 4 noun suffixes are themselves presuppositional, and lend that
attribute to the rest of the noun phrase.  (I think I got that right, 
but I could easily have it completely backwards, or even upside down.)

-- ghunchu'wI'

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