tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Dec 30 00:13:41 2006

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Purpose Clauses (was Re: "conjunction"?)

...Paul ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

Okay, the second half of my response, this one focusing pretty much 
completely on purpose clauses...

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006, QeS 'utlh wrote:
> In short: IMHO, {-meH}-clauses modifying nouns may, but don't need to, take
> pronominal prefixes. {-meH}-clauses modifying verbs, on the other hand, must
> take pronominal prefixes, hence examples like {Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam} in
> which the expected {-lu'} is present; I couldn't find any example of a
> {-meH}-clause modifying a verb that could conceivably be analysed as having
> no pronominal prefixes.

I think I need to take the hard line here and say that verbs using /-meH/ 
even to modify nouns, must follow the rule of /rom/ (KGT, p172), and use 
pronomial prefixes just as any other verb must.

Connecting (and repeating) the "conjunction" discussion, if we gloss 
/rarmeH mu'/ as "conjunction", it does mean one could legally say:

cha' mu'tlhegh rarmeH mu' yIlo'

To mean "For you to connect two sentences, use the word."  (It would be 
fine if you meant to say "For him to connect two sentences, use the word", 
because then the 0-prefix on /rarmeH/ suits the subject of /rar/).

To be correct, you'd have to say:

cha' mu'tlhegh DararmeH mu' yIlo'

I went through KGT, TKW and found no instances where the subject of the 
verb in a purpose clause is first- or second-person and the clause did NOT 
have the correct prefix.  In TKD, there's even the example on p65 where 
the /lu-/ third-person prefix is used.

There's ONE exception I found, though -- in the back of TKD:

Dochvetlh DIlmeH Huch 'ar DaneH
How much do you want for that?

Yuck.  I'd almost chalk this up as a mistake, given the number of other 
places where non-0 prefixes are used, especially telling in the example 
/HIq DaSammeH tach yI'el/, and your example (from the Skybox card) /nargh 
qaSuchmeH 'eb/...

I could only find two examples where a /-meH/ clause inarguably is 
attached to a noun -- /pe'meH taj/ "knife for cutting" is used in KGT as a 
sentence fragment (so I'm not sure we can make any inferences from that) 
and the Skybox card's /qaSuchmeH 'eb/.

There are no cases I could find where a clause appears *after* an object, 
and *before* a verb (if that's even legal).

I'm not entirely convinced that in the majority of examples, where the 
clause appears before an object noun, that the clause actually applies 
*to* the noun, rather than applying to the verb.  Although in some cases I 
can see arguments made for either case.

The second example in TKD is fairly interesting, I think:

jagh luHoHmeH jagh lunejtaH

Okrand just got finished saying "The purpose clause always preceds the 
verb or noun whose purpose it is describing."  But in the example, /jagh 
luHoHmeH/ does NOT describe the purpose of the second /jagh/ -- it's 
describing the purpose of the verb /nej/ "search".  Okrand even states 
this explicitly.

Another good example is in TKW, p35:

tlhutlhmeH HIq ngeb qaq law' bIQ qaq puS

I don't think /tlhutlhmeH/ is purposing /HIq/ but rather the whole of the 
law'/puS construct.  The translation given is "Drinking fake ale is better 
than drinking water."  Perhaps more accurately, "For drinking, fake ale is 
better than water."

Also in TKW, p73:

bIQapqu'meH tar DaSop 'e' DatIvnIS

I don't think the purpose of the poison is for you to succeed; the purpose 
of eating it is...

(also see the very long passage in TKW on p211...)

This says to me that in reality, purpose clauses appear before the 
object-verb-subject syntax of the verb they're modifying (just as might, 
for example, a /-chugh/ construct).

I could even see the clause coming before indirect objects:

DayajmeH SoHvaD qechvam vImuch

"I present this idea to you in order for you to understand it."

If the purpose clause has a 0-prefix, and appears before a noun in the 
object position, it becomes ambiguous as to whether or not the clause 
modifies the object (noun) or verb:

pe'meH taj neH.
"He wants the cutting knife"
"He wants the knife to cut (it)."

If a prefix is attached to the purpose clause, *most likely* it is 
unambiguous.

Ambiguous:

ja'chuqmeH chut laDnIS
He needs to read the law for them to confer
He needs to read the "laws for discussion"

(In the former, the clause identifies the purpose of the verb, in the 
latter, the clause identifies the purpose of the noun -- IMHO, admittedly, 
the distinction is very subtle, but I just can't convince myself they're 
identical...)

Unambiguous:

wIja'chuqmeH chut laDnIS
He needs to read the laws for us to confer.

Here's a contrived example that actually has two purpose clauses, one 
which describes the purpose of the verb, the other describes the purpose 
of the noun it precedes:

yotwI' vIHoHmeH pe'meH taj vIlo'.
"I used the cutting knife to kill the intruder."
"For the purpose of killing the intruder, I used the knife whose purpose 
is cutting."

/vIHoHmeH/ is describing the purpose of the verb /vIlo'/, but /pe'meH/ is 
definitely describing the purpose of the noun /taj/.

I don't think we have any good examples where purpose clauses attached to 
unambiguously to nouns show any example of the "implied indefinite 
subject" idea you proposed -- with the only possible examples of /pe'meH 
taj/ which we don't actually get to see used in an actual sentence, and 
this from TKD:

Dochvetlh DIlmeH Huch 'ar DaneH

Which is only notable because the subject of /DIlmeH/ should either be "I" 
(/vIDIlmeH/ "for me to pay for" -- I believe what the statement is 
actually implying), or "indefinite subject" (/DIllu'meH/ "for one to pay 
for")...

Enough for tonight.  Wow.  Ow.  My head is spinning.

...Paul

          ** ...Paul, [email protected], Insane Engineer **
   ** Visit Project Galactic Guide http://www.galactic-guide.com/ **
     "Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them"
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