tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 17 08:58:56 1998
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Ordering food
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Ordering food
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:58:54 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
- Priority: NORMAL
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998 14:14:40 -0800 (PST) Marc Ruehlaender
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > So <qagh nay' wej vIneH> means "I want ghah dish number three.", which is a
> > valid sentence, but not what you meant. What you want is <wej qagh ngop
> > vIneH> - "I want three plates of ghah."
> >
> I don't know if this is close... how about
>
> wej je'meH qagh vIneH - I want qagh for three (to feed three)
Accidentally, this is a hard one simply because it has {wej}
which can mean "three" acting as a number modifying {qagh}, or
acting as a noun representing some unstated noun, or it can be
an adverbial meaning "not yet". {je'meH} can be modifying {qagh}
or it can be modifying {neH}, and it can mean "in order to feed"
or "in order to buy" and maybe {qagh} is its subject or maybe
not, and maybe {wej} is its object or maybe not. That means this
sentence could be translated nearly a dozen different ways.
If I wanted to say, "I want qagh to feed three", I'd say:
wej nuv je'meH qagh yap vIneH.
I made these small changes in order to carve away some of the
ambiguous meanings. {wej} can still either be a number or an
adverbial, so it could still mean, "I don't yet want enough qagh
to feed people." Meanwhile, this doesn't sound quite as likely
as "I want enough qagh to feed three people."
{nuv} makes {wej} a little less ambiguous because you now know
it is three PEOPLE and not just three of something that could be
bought with qagh. That makes {je'meH} a little less ambiguous,
since it is more likely that you intend to feed people than to
buy people.
{yap} also makes us favor having {je'meH} modify {vIneH} instead
of {qagh} because it makes a little more sense to say, "In order
to feed three people, I want enough qagh," rather than saying,
"I want enough of the in-order-to-feed-three-people qagh."
> Marc Ruehlaender
> aka HomDoq
> [email protected]
>
charghwI' 'utlh