tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 27 18:14:59 1998
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Re: KLBC Nature Phenomenon
ja' qe'San:
>Excuse me for jumping in at the deepend here but surely the 'subject'
>of - rain (v) - is the weather (or possibly the atmosphere/sky).
"Surely"? Hardly. I can think of three reasonable subjects and one rather
odd fourth possibility without trying hard at all. Until we get some sort
of "real" example of these words in use, it's all going to be conjecture.
> The
>'object' would then be the noun which is rained upon eg the house, the
>ground, the hill, the region and so on. Maybe even 'the
>event/celebration'.
If that were the case, the verb would probably have been stated as meaning
"rain on" instead of simply "rain". Based on the examples you give later,
I suspect you're just confusing a locative (a noun with the suffix {-Daq})
with an object, and you really don't consider the thing being rained on to
be the object.
>I would imagine that as a rule the O & S would
>remain unspecified especially the subject.
As a rule, an unspecified subject is indicated by putting the verb suffix
{-lu'} on the verb. :-)
>This would then lead to statements like
>
>'It rained on our region Yesterday' - wa'Hu' SepmajDaq SISpu'
>
>I assumed that the prefix would be it/it (it rained on it).
No, this sentence has no object. {SepmajDaq} is not an object, it's
just a noun marked with the type 5 "locative" suffix to indicate the
spatial setting of the sentence. The prefix would be it/(nothing).
Of course, that's also the null prefix, so the sentence is written
correctly as it is.
-- ghunchu'wI'