tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 08 06:17:44 2004

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Re: joj usage...

Lawrence Schoen ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol ghojwI']

This has been a fascinating discussion (and one which I suspect will 
show up as a RoundTable in a future issue of HolQeD, once it plays 
out).

Still, I have to admit, I don't see what all the fuss is. 
Personally, I see two different grammatical issues here, one being 
syntactic and the other pragmatic. 

Syntactically, I don't have any problem with a sentence like:

>vavwI' SoSwI' je juHDaq jIjaH
>I go to my mother's and my father's house

To my eye, the use of {je} conjoins the two nouns, and syntactically 
they can thereafter be thought of as one noun. It's as simple as 
algebra:

(A + B) C

Pragmatically, the word {joj} would seem to require more than one 
thing for it to make sense. Otherwise, something is missing, as in 
the joke about the one-armed fisherman who caught a fish "this big" 
(insert image of fisherman holding up only one arm to show the size 
of the fish).

This consideration requires that in the following sentence:

>SuvwI' targh je jojDaq jIba'.
>I sit between the warrior and the targh.

the 'area between' must belong to both of the nouns presented.


Note, this is not necessarily the case in this sentence:

>SuvwI' targh je Soj vIghaj
>I have the targh's and the warrior's food

because it is unclear if the food in question is one big lump of 
food (or separate servings of the same food). But the issue here 
strikes me as being a problem of ambiguity, not grammar.

That's my take on all of this, but as I'm not a grammarian I 
wouldn't be surprised to learn I've missed something here.

Lawrence

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