tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 13 07:32:33 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
RE: partitives
- From: "d'Armond Speers" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: partitives
- Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 10:32:53 -0400
- Encoding: 31 TEXT
ghunchu'wI'vo':
> I wrote:
> >...How about {Dal pagh jagh}...Okrand himself says this is ambiguous....
>
> Never mind. I don't know why I thought Okrand had commented on this,
> and I misremembered the ambiguity that *had* been discussed. :-( The
> discussion that I looked up considered the difference between "Having
> no enemies is boring" and "There are no boring enemies." That's sure
> not going to help me while I'm thinking about partitives.
I had looked at this example, too, when I was scouring canon for examples.
When you pointed it out, I got chills, because I was afraid I had missed
the meanings! Your wording for the second interpetation, "no boring
enemies", in a there-insertion context, is clearly cardinal. I was left
wondering, though, whether there could be a presuppositional interpretation
of this. "none of my enemies is boring" would be an example of one. But
we don't have this interpretation, do we?
Although it seemed we had lots of evidence from TKW, I think that the
nature of the work, the collection of proverbs, provides a fertile ground
for cardinal contexts, but not so much for presuppositional ones. It's
speaking in generalities, in sweeping and broad statements. /reH lugh
charghwI'/ and so on. The lack of presuppositional examples may be more a
function of the nature of the book, rather than any features of the
language.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
--Holtej