tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 20 15:06:03 1998
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Re: names and "to be" again (was Re: KLBC)
On Mon, 19 Oct 1998 20:20:03 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ja' charghwI':
> >"Perhaps it is merely arbitrary that we do not apply definite or
> >indefinite articles to names in English." You answer that by
> >explaining, "One doesn't add an article when talking about the
> >name itself." So? I wasn't arguing about that.
>
> I thought your examples looked like that was your point. I apologize
> for misunderstanding them. My reply is that I've not seen articles
> added in *any* language about which I have enough knowledge to speak.
> Of course, since only three of them even *have* indefinite articles
> (English, Spanish and Portugese), that's not saying much.
So, if only three languages have indefinite articles (well, I
know that French and Danish do, too, so there are more than
three total) and the rest get on so well without them, why are
you placing so much weight on whether or not a name can carry
one? Klingon doesn't have indefinite articles. So, why can't you
just let go of it? You are artificially throwing an indefinite
article into your English translation of these Klingon sentences
and then complaining because it doesn't sound right.
> >Your argument seems based upon two apparent observations:
> >
> >1. The normal use of proper names does not include an article
> >(definite or indefinite). [That's "the" or "a" to the
> >grammatically uninitiated.)
>
> That's not quite what I'm saying. The "normal" use of proper names
> is as a substitute for what they refer to. They are very much like
> fancy pronouns. The usage I am concerned about is when it is the
> *name itself* being referred to, not the possessor of the name.
Okay. I'll try to be more careful about addressing this.
> >2. In the "to be" sentences that you can think of, especially
> >going by the Klingon examples we have, the object of the verb
> >"to be" in English does take a definite article or an indefinite
> >article, or the Klingon noun uses a Type 4 suffix (which
> >identifies the noun as we would do with a possessive pronoun or
> >helper words like "this" and "that").
>
> This is not just based on the examples I can come up with offhand.
> Voragh presented a comprehensive survey of the topic, and there was
> one sentence that makes me strain a bit in order to include it in my
> interpretation: {'entepray' 'oH DoS'e'}. But even if I have to bend
> it slightly, making it mean not quite exactly what its subtitle said,
> it doesn't break.
So, you are saying that the target is a subset of Enterprises?
You are saying this fits the model of {tlhIngan ghaH
Qanqor'e'.}? More precisely, according to your chosen wording of
these things, "The target is an Enterprise."? And that isn't
broken?
Amazing facts!
The point is that in that sentence, there is exactly one target
and there is exactly one Enterprise, and if we want to get even
more picky about it, the world may have many targets, just as it
may have many Klingons, but there is only one Enterprise, just
as there is only one Krankor. If we have to be constricted to
your artificial restriction that "to be" can only indicate
member-subject/set-object, then this example is broken. If,
however, "to be" can indicate equivalence, nothing is broken at
all. This is simply an example of "The target = the Enterprise".
If you think this requires a little "bending" but it doesn't
break, bend away. I'd love to read a better explanation.
Consider this to be my stubbornness that will press you to
sharpen your blade all the more.
> >Therefore, since the proper names don't have a Type 4 suffix in
> >Klingon and they don't have an article in English, and
> >people are trying to use these special nouns as objects of "to
> >be", then something is wrong and this should not happen.
>
> The wording isn't as I would put it, but the idea is close enough.
Well, then I achieved my goal. I sought to express your idea in
words you would not choose, since you would choose words that
made your idea appear to work even if it doesn't. If I
successfully express your idea such that you can't say I've
misled anyone, yet the wording more clearly reveals the problem
with the idea, then that's what I was after.
> >I think to understand all this better, we should look harder at
> >what kind of nouns have articles and which ones don't. I think
> >you are wrong in your assertion that it has anything to do with
> >being a subject or object in a "to be" sentence.
>
> After looking at it closely for a while, my discomfort appears to be
> more with using {pong} as the subject of a "to be" sentence while at
> the same time using a name as the object.
When you have whittled it down to something this specific, it is
time to consider the potential that you have an idiomatic
approach to a specfic set of words that may not carry across any
language barrier. It sounds like you've gone along a progression
that works something like this:
"I don't like {*Alan* 'oH pongwIj'e'} because I am different
from anyone else using the language in that I personally read
that to mean 'My name is an Alan.' All objects to 'to be'
sentences have to have an article unless the Klingon noun had a
Type 4 suffix. That doesn't work for names. Since names don't
take articles, a name has to be the subject."
"What? It is not always the case that subjects don't need an
article, but objects do? Oh, well then, it still doesn't work
for me because of mention/use stuff. That's the ticket."
"Oh, and if THAT doesn't work, then, well, umm, I just don't
like the use of {pong} as a subject and a name as an object. So
THERE!"
I suggest that you can't get away with just not liking the use
of {pong} as a subject and a name as the object of "to be". You
need a better reason than that, and it has to be better
explained that what you have offered so far in terms of
"mention/use". There has to be a REASON that this doesn't work
and that reason has to be so universal that we can be sure that
it doesn't work even though we have one example that seems to
defy your rule and we have absolutely nothing from Okrand
reinforcing your rule.
I promise I will definitely accept your perspective if you can
successfully present such a universal reason for this AND a good
explanation for why {'entepray' 'oH DoS'e'} seems to violate
your objection.
Furthermore, I don't see equivalence as a problem. I don't see
where it will make Klingon expression any less clear or less
graceful or versatile. We lose nothing.
And, by the way, among the things you snipped was my request for
you to show us a way to express equivalence without "to be". You
still have not answered that. You can snip it again, and I'll
just bring it up again.
> >[snip survey of English use of indefinite and definite articles]
>
> >Proper names also identify nouns. We don't need articles to
> >specify the degree of identity for nouns preceeded by possessive
> >pronouns and we don't need articles in front of names. We also
> >don't need articles in front of plain old pronouns. *"The I am a
> >Klingon."* We already know there is only one "I", so we don't
> >need anything else to express that the identity is certain.
>
> Agreed: we don't need articles in front of pronouns. Pronouns are
> generally used to stand in for nouns that have already had their
> "definiteness" specified. So are names; we don't need articles in
> front of them either. But that's when the name is being used as a
> stand-in for the thing named.
Just to add in that "one" is our indefinite pronoun. It is so
different from the rest of our pronouns that one always feels a
little uneasy about its use. It sounds formal and stilted no
matter how many times one uses it. We will even get into the
whole gender/number mess trying to use normal pronouns instead
of it. The whole reason I even bring it up is to make it even
more clear that articles are implied within the function of a
pronoun. This runs deeper than simply that they represent
identified nouns. Degree of identification is built into these
functional units.
> >...but since any pronoun ALWAYS deserves "the"
> >instead of "a" since it is ALWAYS a definite (as in "identified")
> >noun, we don't bother using the definite article in front of it.
> >In fact, we NEVER use any article in front of it at all.
> >
> >Now, THERE'S a coincidence! In examples like "I am a Klingon,"
> >the "to be" verb is represented by a pronoun, which doesn't need
> >an article in English. Meanwhile, if there is an explicit
> >subject in a "to be" sentence in Klingon, in English we don't
> >use the pronoun any more, so your average subject begins to need
> >an article again.
>
> Okay, you've done a reasonable job of working through when and where
> articles get used in English subjects of "to be". It's not totally
> relevant to my argument, nor is it totally irrelevant, but it's not
> what I'm concerned about.
I know it is not what you are concerned about. That was pretty
much my point. I think it is what you SHOULD be concerned about
because what started your objection in the first place was that
you thought somehow objects of the "to be" sentences needed to
have articles. That's why you came up with "My name is an Alan"
in the first place. If it was true that the presence or absence
of an article had something to do with the grammatical role of
being a subject or object of a "to be" sentence, then you had a
point. Meanwhile, what I'm arguing is that the presence or
absence of an article has EVERYTHING to do with what kind of
noun we're talking about and NOTHING to do with being a subject
or an object.
If it has nothing to do with being an object, then you have no
argument whatsoever. That's why you should be concerned about
the observation that the presence or absence of articles is
related only to what kind of noun it would go in front of. "My
name is an Alan," sounds wrong because "an" doesn't belong in
front of "Alan". Meanwhile, there is absolutely no grammatical
justification for putting it there in the first place.
Pause.
Read that again.
There is absolutely no justification for putting "an" in front
of "Alan". You made that up. It has nothing to do with "to be"
sentences of any kind.
A long time ago, I pointed out that I could screw up "Alan is my
name," by changing it to "An Alan is my name," with exactly the
same authority that you screwed up "My name is Alan" by changing
it to "My name is an Alan." You ignored that. You never
addressed it. It is the core of my arguement and I've been
trying to express it in some other terms so you'd pay attention
to it and you haven't.
That's the frustrating part about this argument. I make a
major point and you snip it. I make a minor point and you
address it. I respect the respect you offer to these minor
points, but until you actually address the major ones, I don't
feel like I'm getting through.
My major point is that I don't think articles have anything to
do with being subject or object in a "to be" sentence. What you
did by adding an inappropriate article in to your English
translation was never justified.
You've addressed a lot of points, but you've never addressed
that one.
> >So, perhaps your attention has been diverted focussing on
> >whether the object needed an article by the fact that subjects
> >fall under the same rule, and the presence or absence of
> >articles has nothing to do with whether it is subject or object
> >and instead has to do with whether the noun is a proper name, a
> >pronoun or it preceeded by a possessive pronoun.
> >
> >"The captain is a Klingon."
> >
> >Now, both the subject and the object have articles. Now, let's
> >put a name in it:
> >
> >Krankor is a Klingon.
> >
> >The captain is Krankor.
> >
> >The presence or absence of an article has everything to do with
> >names and nothing to do with what is subject or object.
>
> This is fine, except that it misses the "use/mention distinction" that
> goes along with a name. In your examples, you are *using* the name as
> a glorified pronoun, referring to the named entity. But to take one
> of your earlier scenarios, let's imagine a convention of officers all
> named Krankor. Suddenly, it's right to say "the captain is a Krankor."
Well, actually, it sounds weird. In that situation, I'd say,
"The captain is one of the Krankors." But that's beside the
point. I don't care if there is a setting in which one might use
an article with a proper name. My point is that having or
lacking an article never had anything to do with being subject
or object of a "to be" sentence.
Do I have to make that a montra before it gets addressed?
Everything else is a diversion from the fact that you have no
argument. You can dance in all kinds of directions, but when it
comes down to it, you never had a reason for adding "an" to "My
name is Alan." Lacking any excuse for having done that, you lack
any excuse for objecting to the result. I'd object to the
result, too. It sounds weird. It sounds wrong.
It sounds wrong because it IS wrong. There was never
justification for adding "an" to the sentence in the first
place. An there an never an was an a an reason an for an adding
an it an in an the an first an place. Did I just create some
kind of valid argument against that sentence? No. I just added
the word "an" to some places it didn't belong.
That's pretty much all you ever did. You didn't reveal any truth
by adding "an". You just screwed up the sentence. We can agree
that you screwed up the sentence, but we are nowhere near
agreeing that you had any reason for doing so.
> >Now, it would be a bit odd to say, "A Klingon is Krankor,"
> >because in that case, we are talking about the member/set
> >function of the "to be" verb. Meanwhile, "Krankor is the
> >captain," and "The captain is Krankor," are both equally valid
> >sentences, much like "My name is Alan," and "Allen is my name,"
> >because there is exactly one thing which is "my name" and there
> >is one thing which is "Alan". Neither is a subset of the other.
> >They are equal in what they are identifying.
>
> Um, no. I have to make a distinction between the two concepts you're
> calling "much like" each other. The Captain Krankor example:
>
> Krankor is the captain / the captain is Krankor
>
> Though they are both valid sentences, these don't say quite the same
> thing to me. If I encountered {Qanqor ghaH HoD'e'} outside this
> discussion, I'd interpret it literally as "the captain is a Krankor."
There is no reason to do this. You are simply screwing up your
translation. Your inability to successfully translate this
simple sentence does not constitute a problem with the sentence.
Klingon does not have articles. We add them to our English
translation WHERE APPROPRIATE in order to make the sentences
sound better to our English speaking ears. Meanwhile, sentences
work without articles.
Captain is Krankor.
Krankor is captain.
You have problem with this? We go outside. Talk. Not break so
much furniture this way.
> The name Alan example:
>
> my name is Alan / Alan is my name
>
> I've often grumbled that the first sentence misstates the case, as I
> have many names and not all of them are Alan.
So your REAL problem is that you don't like the ENGLISH sentence
"My name is Alan." I'll point out that this makes you
exceptional among English speakers. You want to take your
English stylistic eccentricity and turn it into an established
grammatical rule for Klingon. I don't think this should work.
> But the real problem
> with my reading of these is that they are using "to be" to indicate
> identity, and my thesis here is that Klingon doesn't do that.
I may not be Will, but my NAME is Will. Saying, "I am Will," may
be considered an idiom, but saying, "My name is Will," is pretty
straight forward. Can you really be a name? But a name is, well,
a name. So MY name is Will. I may have other names, but that
name is mine, so that name is my name. I could have more than
one car, but that car is MY car. I may have more than one chair,
but this chair is MY chair. I may not BE this chair, but the
chair is my chair and my chair is this chair.
In as much as names are possessed by those who are identified by
them, a person's name is their name, so whether you like it or
not, your name is Alan. You may not actually BE Alan, but you
can't really argue that your name is not Alan because, well, it
is. It just IS. If it isn't then, well, what is it?
> >I thank you for bringing me to this point of clarifying my ideas
> >about how this works. Had you been less stubborn, I would have
> >remained more vague.
>
> Rational debate is a funny thing -- one's tools get sharper with use. :)
That's certainly the draw here.
> >Meanwhile, if you wish to extend your stubbornness even further,
> >please address this more explicitly explained perspective. Also,
> >if you simply believe that *I* am stubborn and incorrect, please
> >point out to me the flaw in my logic or the incorrect premise
> >upon which it is built.
>
> Your logic is fine, as are your premises. You have merely missed two
> additional premises that form the core of my discomfort: names do not
> always refer to the thing or person having the name; and pronouns as
> "to be" can always be interpreted as indicating categorization/subset.
Your latter premise is, so far as I can tell, without any basis
whatsoever. Okrand never says it is true and he has given us one
example you pointed out which seems very much to violate it
outright. Meanwhile, the first of your two premises is, so far
as I can tell, not relevant to the argument at all.
1. It is just FINE to use "to be" to indicate equivalence, as in
{'enterpray' 'oH DoS'e'.}
2. Names don't have to always refer to the thing or person
having the name. That is not significant when translating
{*Alan* 'oH pongwIj'e'.}
3. None of this has anything to do with articles and the
beginning of this whole argument was your inappropriate addition
of an article into an otherwise fine translation specifically in
order to sabotage the sentence, artificially making it sound as
if it were invalid.
> >> >Someone asks what your name is and you say, "My name is an
> >> >Allen."
> >>
> >> No, I wouldn't say that. As soon as I say "my name is" something, that
> >> something is going to be either a name or something that describes names.
> >
> >No. "My name is" doesn't make any difference here at all. What
> >makes the difference is that names don't get articles placed in
> >front of them for the same reason that pronouns don't get them
> >and the same reason that nouns identified by possessive
> >pronouns or possessive proper nouns don't need them. The degree
> >to which we are being definite about a noun is already
> >established, so we don't need to set this degree of certainty
> >about identifying a specific noun as we do with definite or
> >indefinite articles.
> >
> >> [It might be an adjective like "common" or "hard to spell", for example.]
> >
> >[snip list of "My name is..." sentences]
> >
> >"My name is..." Need I go on? Starting with "My name is..." has
> >nothing to do with whether or not the object will have an
> >article in front of it. The object of that sentence will need or
> >not need an article depending solely upon whether in any other
> >context that same noun (with any Type 4 equivalents or
> >noun-noun possessives still attached) would need an article.
>
> But your list failed to include any examples where you actually gave
> a name using "is" to indicate equivalence. None of them had anything
> in them to yield the problem I have with the "my name is Will" phrasing.
Meanwhile, you have failed utterly to show any valid reason that
you should HAVE any problem with "My name is Will." It does not
deserve the addition of an article in front of "Will" as you
added it in front of "Alan" in the earlier example, and without
that excuseless article, the sentence is a very common one in
English and has no grammatical rule to invalidate it. In
English, the verb "to be" can indicate equivalence.
Concise Oxford Dictionary:
be - ... 2. ... "coincide in identity with"
Hmmm. Seems a lot like equivalence to me. Doesn't sound like "is
a member of". Equivalence. Deal with it.
> >> "An Allen" (or "an Alan") describes a *person*, not a name. I don't think
> >> I'm being unreasonably pedantic about this.
> >
> >No. You are simply being inaccurate. At least you are not being
> >approximate!
>
> I disagree completely with your assessment of my inaccuracy. Can you
> give me a valid example of describing someone's name as "a Charlotte"
> or "a Benjamin"?
That is EXACTLY what I mean by you going after the wrong target.
This is completely irrelavent. It has nothing to do with whether
or not a name can be an object of a "to be" sentence. It is
smoke and mirrors. You are deceived by your own accidental
distraction.
> A name can be described as "a word" or "a sound" or
> "a symbol", but I am quite certain it can not be "an Alan". A person
> can be "an Alan" (but he can not be "a sound" or "a word").
More smoke and mirrors. This has nothing to do with a name being
capable of acting as object of a "to be" sentence.
> >It is not so much that you have missed a target. It is that
> >you have missed THE target because you took aim at some OTHER
> >target, fooled by a similarity between the two. Whatever the
> >case, the true target has not yet been hit by you.
>
> I don't know what target you're expecting me to hit here, but I think I
> can indicate clearly the one I'm aiming at. Ready? Here it is:
>
> "Klingon pronouns as 'to be' should not be used to indicate
> equality the way "my name is Alan" does in English."
Except of course in the sentence {'enterpray' 'oH DoS'e'} one
assumes. Okrand was either mistaken, or he was making a special
case in this example. It must have been an ancient dialect,
right?
Then again, your new rule could also be used to object to a lot
of other cases. Any time the object is as unique as the subject,
you are saying that the sentence is wrong. The object always has
to have more members in it than the subject.
I think you are dead wrong. I think in trying to find the nugget
to back up your invalid argument, you've grabbed for an even
less defensible rule.
> After thinking about it carefully, that's all I want to say. The whole
> business about articles on the object is all a small tangent that can
> justify saying {pongwIj 'oH Alan-'e'} instead of the other way around.
No it's not. You never once addressed the simple truth that "An
Alan is my name" is exactly as wrong and exactly as
unjustifiable as "My name is an Alan." There is no difference
between these. In both cases, a good sentence was screwed up by
the inappropriate addition of an indefinite article. It never
had anything to do with what is subject and what is object. It
just had to do with an invalid distraction from your lack of a
point to your argument.
[Please note that I didn't start out quite this agressive. I got
this way because of the slippery way you keep avoiding any
recognition that this isn't a grammatical rule. It is something
you made up.]
> >[...]
> >> First, "is" works fine to indicate equivalence *in English*.
> >
> >Okay, then how do we *in Klingon* express equivalence, if not
> >with pronouns in a "to be" construction? Do tell.
>
> Is this a serious question? It sure looks like one. Okay, I'll answer
> it seriously.
>
> Equivalence in Klingon is expressed in two ways. One is by the use of
> a verb such as {rap} "be the same". The most obvious way to use such a
> verb is to give the equivalent things as a plural subject: {rap SoSwI'
> be'nI'lI' je} "my mother and your sister are the same."
So, you would argue that Okrand should have said, {rap DoS
'enterpray' je.} But he didn't, just like he likely would have
not said {rap SoSwI' be'nI'lI' je} and would instead have
preferred {SoSwI' ghaH be'nI'lI''e'}
> The other way
> to indicate equivalence is syntactically, using apposition. The two
> things are stated sequentially, both falling in the same syntactic slot
> in the sentence. This is commonly used with names: {Qugh torgh puqloD
> vIqIHpu'} "I have met Kruge, Torg's son."
This works as a noun phrase. It does not work as a sentence,
however. How could I use this to indicate, "The target is the
Enterprise."? How could I use this to indicate, "My name is
Will."? We need a verb here. Klingon uses a pronoun to function
as that verb. We even let it have verbal suffixes in order to
accomplish this more perfectly.
> Under my interpretation of pronouns as "to be", there's another way that
> can be interpreted as equivalence, but it isn't explicit. If one uses a
> pronoun as "to be" with a sufficiently well-specified object, that object
> can sometimes be restricted to a single thing, and the subject must be a
> member of the set containing only that thing.
In other words, equivalence. Two plus two is four. I am what I
am and that's all that I am. A deal is a deal. Truth is truth.
God is God.
And the funny thing about sufficiently specifying an object so
that it is restricted to a single thing is that you can then
reverse the subject and object and, lo and behold, the new
object can ALSO be restricted to a single thing, just like the
old one did. That's why they are reversible.
> >> Second, the
> >> "your problem is a congestion" phrasing doesn't sound wrong to me anyway.
> >> Make it "your disease is mumps" in Klingon instead, and I'm indeed going
> >> to want it to be said {roplIj 'oH "mumps"-'e'}.
> >
> >Except for your probably incorrect misobservation about
> >articles, could you please explain why?
>
> Because I believe {'oH} to be a categorizer, I thus believe the specific
> disease "mumps" should be the subject and the general phrase "your disease"
> should be the object.
But mumps is only one disease. And "your disease" is only one
disease. They are the SAME disease. They are equivalents. They
are reverseable. If mumps is really more than one disease, or if
"your disease" is really more than one disease, then this is no
longer an equivalence and it becomes significant which is
subject and which is object, or the statement becomes false.
> >You still have not suggested how to express equivalence. You
> >just express how offended you are that others try to use
> >pronouns in the "to be" construction in order to do so. Do you
> >have some other means of doing this that you have simply
> >forgotten to share with us?
> >
> >For years now?
>
> I guess you *were* being serious the first time. Does the verbal {rap}
> work for you?
No. Certainly not in most cases. It is awkward and if Okrand
meant for us to use it in this way, likely {'enterpray' 'oH
DoS'e'} would have been a great opportunity for him to have
shown us as much. I see {rap} as being much more useful as an
adjective:
wa'Hu' quS vItI'. DaHjaj quS rapDaq bIba'.
be' rap luneHmo' Suv cha' loD.
That sort of thing. Pronouns don't do that very well. {rap}
does. It does so very gracefully without the awkwardness of
always forcing a plural subject, often having to deal with mixed
person as a result. "My brother and I are my father's only
sons." Try saying THAT with {rap}. It's awkward enough with
pronouns, but it works. With rap, it is an ugly mass of nouns.
vavwI' puqloDpu' maH loDnI' jIH je neH.
*rap vavwI' puqloDpu' loDnI' jIH je neH.
Yuck.
> I thought it was obvious. The appropriate (as defined by
> my unusally narrow interpretation of "to be") use of pronouns as "to be"
> *can* express equivalence, but not as a primary syntactic effect. Like
> the occasional {'ej} implying sequence, it's the way the world works and
> not the grammar that brings out the "equivalence" meaning.
Your argument is really crumbling here. It sounds like you are
explaining why it doesn't work, though you really think it
should.
> >I respect your right to be passionate about this stuff, but I do
> >see one significant difference between the example of my "Which
> >weapon do you want?" and your "Alan is my name." I was telling
> >people, "There are problems with the way you guys are trying to
> >express this question, but you can avoid all those problems if
> >you change it to a command for others to choose." You are
> >telling us, "There is a problem with your trying to express
> >equivalents through pronoun/"to be" expressions." You don't
> >offer any suggestions on how else to express this.
>
> Actually, I *have* been giving my preferred way to express this, and I
> have done it every single time I mentioned my discomfort with phrases
> like {torgh 'oH pongwIj'e'}. I'm sure you'll recognize it immediately:
>
> {pongwIj 'oH torgh'e'}
There is no reason that we should consider {pongwIj} to be a set
of things restricted to one without considering {torgh} to be
identically restricted. In both cases, we are talking about one
item. These items are equivalent. There is no justification for
arguing that one of them is uniquely qualified to be the object
of this sentence while the other is not.
> Since "my name" is rather restricted in this context, this phrase does
> a pretty good job of indicating equivalence between {torgh} and {pongwIj}.
So, you are arguing that if we drop the {-wIj}, it is valid to
say {pong 'oH torgh'e'} but it is not valid to say {torgh 'oH
pong'e'.}
That's the first thing you've said that I can agree with. If you
remove the restriction given by {-wIj}, then we have an example
of "to be" acting as the junction between a member of a set and
the set itself, as in {tlhIngan maH}.
Meanwhile, this has nothing to do with articles. In fact, it has
no more to do with the object of "to be" than it does with the
SUBJECT of "to be". It has nothing to do with use/mention. It is
worthy of note.
Meanwhile, it is not justification for your argument.
Restricting {pong} by adding {-wIj} is not really any different
from restricting the entire universe of potential names by using
{torgh}. In both cases, we are pointing to one item. That item
is {pongwIj}. That item is also {torgh}. Those two different
nouns point to the same entity. They are equivalents. A "to be"
sentence bonding these two as subject and object is a statement
of equivalence.
I don't care if we got that equivalence through narrowing the
scope of the object or if it just plain works that way. Either
way, it just plain works that way. How can you so repeatedly
express that you are very much alone in your interpretation of
this, and then step back out and argue that the rest of us
should do the same.
> But, again, it's only in this particular context that the equivalence
> holds; the idea doesn't work the same when stated in the other order.
> And in the case of names, I don't even think equivalence is necessarily
> the right concept to be expressing.
I honestly don't think you have any grounds for making that
exceptional objection.
> -- ghunchu'wI'
charghwI' 'utlh