tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 07 10:04:37 2001
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Re: Expelling Ambiguity
From: "Marc Ruehlaender" <[email protected]>
> talking about ambiguities in
>
> jajvetlh quv'e' jIHvaD bIjatlh
>
> why shouldn't the "topic" header noun precede the "time stamp"
> header noun, such as
>
> quv'e' jajvetlh jIHvaD bIjatlh
>
> this clearly elimintaes the possibility of {quv} (or {batlh}
> for that matter) being a modifier of (being modified by) {jaj}.
Somewhere it is mentioned that time references come at the beginning of a
sentence, while TKD says that header nouns come before the object (though it
doesn't use the term "header noun"). This would tend to suggest that
time-referencing header nouns come before other header nouns.
I can't imagine that this is an unbreakable fact of life, though. For the
sake of clarity, I'm sure a slight bending of this custom would be in order.
batlh'e' jajvetlh jIHvaD bIjatlh
There is little chance of mistaking the /jajvetlh/ and /jIHvaD/ as being a
noun-noun construction ("for that day's me" doesn't make much sense).
I feel certain that the position of a time reference at the beginning of a
sentence is mentioned by Okrand somewhere, but I don't have my books with me
when I'm at work! Does anyone know what the source is?
SuStel
Stardate 1349.0