tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 20 09:01:34 1998
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Re: names and "to be" again (was Re: KLBC)
On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 23:18:53 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ja' qoror:
> >I have never studied French, but in extremely colloquial German, the
> >definite article is used with names of people. Zum Beispiel, "Der Manfred
> >soll reinkommen." (This might sound artificial to native speakers; I have
> >never spoken for an extended period of time with a real German.)
>
> Just so I'm clear on this, is this ever used to talk about the name, or
> is it always used when referring to the person?
>
> Even in English, we find things like "The Enterprise" used in reference
> to a ship, but the actual name of the ship is just "Enterprise". It's a
> matter of the "use/mention" duality of names, which is universal enough
> that I assume it's also a feature of Klingon.
Actually, I think we tend to add articles to proper names often
when we speak of neuter nouns, but we don't when those nouns are
people or animals. We talk about the Grand Canyan, the
Constitution of the United States, and the Enterprise, but we
don't talk about the Alan, the John Luc Picard or the Worf.
It has less to do with use/mention than it has to do with rocks
and metal vs. flesh and bone.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI' 'utlh