tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 09 23:19:29 1998

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Re: {-meH} and its useage




>Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 16:04:16 -0600 (CST)
>From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: {-meH} and its useage
>Message-ID: <[email protected]>

'eQ asked:

>: I just wondered how it would look like if a {-meH} phrase would modify a
>: verb, especially if both the {-meH} phrase *and* the other verb has both
>: subject and object. 

Voragh wrote:

>Some quick reactions. Remember, all verbs in a sentence have a subject, it's
>just not always explicitly stated. Here are examples of -meH clauses from
>canon with verbs having objects (explicit and otherwise) for you to examine:

(Some examples cut out.)

>: My example sentence is:
>:   The warrior attacks the boy in order to learn the boy {tonSaw'}.

>This English sentence is unclear. Do you mean that 1) the warrior attacks
>the boy in order to teach the boy tonSaw' (i.e. the warrior is the boy's
>tonSaw' teacher), or 2) the warrior attacks the boy in order to judge the
>state of the boy's tonSaw' (in order to see how good the boy really is or
>trick the boy into revealing his ability or learn which style of tonSaw' the
>boy uses)?

I did not think of this ambiguity but I meant "The warrior attacks >the boy
in order to teach the boy tonSaw'."

>: Now, should this be expressed as:
>:    {tonSaw' ghojmeH loDHom loDHom HIv SuvwI'}
>: or:
>:    {loDHom tonSaw' ghojmeH loDHom HIv SuvwI'}
>: (Since the TKD [p64] talks about the purpose clause preceeding the *verb*,
>: not the object-verb-subject construction.)
>: 
>: And in both these cases it would be easy to mix up subject and object of
>: the two phrases, for example if the final object-verb-subject did not have
>: an object noun.

>You could replace one of the {loDHom}s with a pronoun. You can also just
>leave the {ghaH} out altogether.  Using punctuation helps too.

Ok, thats nice of you to point out. But I was trying to come up with a
sentence that had expicit subject and object nouns all along, since I was
interested in what this would look like.

>1)   tonSaw' ghojmeH loDHom, (ghaH) HIv SuvwI'.

- This answered my question. Thanks!

>   or you could put the -meH clause last:
>
>     (ghaH) HIv SuvwI', tonSaw' ghojmeH loDHom.
>
>2)   tonSaw'Daj ghojmeH, loDHom HIv SuvwI'.

Really?! TKD (p64) states: "The purpose clause [whose verb end in -meH]
*always precedes* the noun or verb whose purpose it is describing."
(Epathsize added) Is there newer canon I do no know of, to support your
opinion here?

/'eQ, Sweden



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