tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 15 13:34:02 1998
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names and "to be" again (was Re: KLBC)
On Thu, 15 Oct 1998 08:20:57 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ja' charghwI':
> >I've heard people say both, "My name is Alan," and "Alan is my
> >name." Meanwhile, adding the indefinite article as you have done
> >in "My name is an 'Alan'," is no different from adding it to the
> >other word order forming: "An 'Alan' is my name."
>
> I add it to the object because the preponderance of examples given to us
> add an article to the object in the English translation of a pronoun-as-
> "to be" sentence. With very few exceptions, all of them seem to work well
> if one translates the pronoun-as-verb using "is a/an", and most of those
> exceptions work well if it's translated using "is the". (A Type 4 noun
> suffix on the object would override the article, of course, the way it
> does in any translation of a noun.)
[Good continuation of this argument snipped]
> -- ghunchu'wI'
bIghoHchu'lI', jupwI'. Meanwhile, there is an angle to this that
you may not have considered. Perhaps it is merely arbitrary that
we do not apply definite or indefinite articles to names in
English. What is different about a name that it is not correct
to say, "My name is the Alan." Or what if there is a whole room
full of people named Alan. Let's say it is an Alan convention.
Someone asks what your name is and you say, "My name is an
Allen."
It sounds strange to us because by convention, we don't put
articles in front of proper names, but that's not always the
case in all languages. La Paris, par example.
So, what if the problem you are having is not with there being
something peculiar about having someone's name be the object of
the verb "to be", but instead is a quirk of English that we
don't put articles in front of proper names?
Consider other nouns we don't use articles on, like abstract
nouns. "Your problem is congestion." We would not say, "Your
problem is a congestion." Do you argue that we must always say
this as "Congestion is your problem."?
When I say {tlhIngan jIH,} I'm saying that I (the subject) am a
subset of Klingons (the object). When I say, "Congestion is your
problem," I'm not saying that "Congestion" (the subject) is a
subset of "your problem" (the object). Similarly, "Alan" is not
a subset of "my name".
I argue that both Klingon pronouns and the verb "to be"
sometimes indicate equivalents and sometimes indicate subsets.
When it indicates a subset, then the subject is the subset and
the object is the larger set. When it indicates equivalents,
then the subject and object are reversable. Your observation
about articles is an arbitrary quirk of English that has nothing
to do with the grammar.
charghwI'