tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 11 09:32:53 1996
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Re: partitives
- From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: partitives
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 11:32:52 CDT
- In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 11 Oct 1996 08:49:07 PDT." <[email protected]>
> "Presuppositional." :) There's no difference in interpretation between =
> "ship of theirs" and "their ship." It's just two different wordings in =
> English.
That was exactly my point. Just that "their ship" seems to be somewhat
more 'natural' English than "ship of theirs".
> The difference between cardinal and presuppositional depends =
> upon the interpretation of quantifiers. =20
>
> Think about it in terms of sets.
> <explanation snipped>
Let me try to rephrase it with my own words, to see if I understand
it right:
a qualifier is 'cardinal' if it's interpreted as 'setting up' a set
the members of which are of the type that the qualified noun specifies
a qualifier is 'presuppositional' if it's interpreted as defining a
subset of a presupposed set of things specified by the qualified noun
Now if that's correct, my point is that maybe "ships of theirs" can
be interpreted as members of a set to be 'set up' (I hate this set-
setting :( ) so that "some (ships of theirs)" is a new set of, well,
"ships of theirs" (as a single concept) and _not_ a subset of "their
ships". (I ought to repeat: I said 'maybe'!!)
What about
>
> * there are their ships in orbit
? there are ships of theirs in orbit
> * there are two their ships in orbit
? there are two ships of theirs in orbit
_if_ (ships of theirs) is a single concept?
> > or are there canon phrases that clearly show, the interpretation
> > I've given above cannot be used?
>
> It's not that there's canon to show you can't do it; there's no canon to =
> show you can. =20
>
oh-oh... I see myself running into some argument again :-(
Let me try to explain what I meant:
is there an example where you couldn't replace formulations like
"their ship" with formulations like "ship of theirs"?
I certainly wouldn't expect Okrand to use the second or give us
both forms, bc usually they mean just the same thing.
and if maltz didn't tell him :-) how would he know, whether
Klingons conceive of it as a single concept or not...
so - I'm questioning, whether the evidence we have from Okrands
translations is sufficient to rule out interpretations like this.
I'm not questioning, whether we should _use_ _any_ interpretation!
(in fact I'm pretty much annoyed by constructs like qaStaHvIS,
because my conceptions of {qaS} and of {taHvIS} are mutually
exclusive - similar things happen with the use of {-DI'} :( )
all I'm trying to do, is keeping my -and maybe some others' -
minds open for possibilities.
HomDoq