tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 11 12:58:04 1996
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Re: partitives
- From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: partitives
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 96 14:40:48 EST
[regarding {pagh jupwI'}]
qon Holtej:
>It's something I'd like to know more about. Given the discussion in TKD =
>and canon, we don't have any evidence to support "none of my friends," =
>that I know of, the dubious /HochHom/ example notwithstanding.
I found one! How about {Dal pagh jagh} from TKW? (I'm going from
memory, so I really hope I'm not misremembering it.)
Okrand himself says this is ambiguous; that sure seems like supporting
evidence to me. :-) "None of the enemies is boring." "There are no
boring enemies." (Yep, that looks about right.)
Maybe {pagh} has some special status. Maybe the ambiguity is between
"none" and "zero", and "real" numbers still can not have partitive
meaning when they precede a noun. But the phrase I used that started
this -- {pagh jupwI' Sum} -- looks like it indeed can legitimately
mean "none of my nearby friends".
-- ghunchu'wI'