tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 23 14:05:25 1998

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Re: Fw: Problem with {-meH} and negative meanings

At 09:08 AM 1/23/98 -0800, charghwI' wrote:
>According to Terrence Donnelly:
>> You're right, of course.  I wrote that thinking only of the fact that 
>> {-bogh} and {-meH} (in this usage) both modify nouns.  Their meanings
>> are certainly very different.  I find the {-meH} usage "more flexible"
>> only in that the head noun of the phrase could conceivably be any
>> part of speech in the outer (main verb) phrase, while the head noun
>> of a {-bogh} construction can only be the subject or object of the
>> outer phrase.
>
>{-meH} doesn't have a head noun. Besides the syntactical
>difference between {-meH} and {-bogh}, there is a fundamental
>difference in grammatical structure between them. If you remove
>{-bogh} from a relative clause, you get a sentence. The subject
>or object of that sentence also happens to be the subject or
>object of the main verb in the larger sentence. That head noun
>functions as a noun in both clauses (relative and main) at the
>same time.
>
>If you take the {-meH} out of a purpose clause, you also get a
>whole sentence. Meanwhile, none of the nouns in that sentence
>serve any function at all for the main verb. The whole purpose
>clause in its entirety modifies either a noun or the main verb.
>There is no head noun.
>

Perhaps a misuse of the terminology, then.  What _do_ you call the
second noun in a N1-N2 construction?  I think you can make a case
that a {-meH} phrase in these kinds of constructions is functioning
nominally relative to the second noun, that the whole phrase is acting
as if it is an N1.  So, what do you call the second noun?  I've
always seen the N1-N2 construction as a sort of head-modifier
phrase (with the head coming second, of course).  Am I wrong to think so?

-- ter'eS

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