tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 28 08:50:53 2006
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Re: pronouns
Shane MiQogh:
> >Equals is considered a "copula" which, in japanese, is considered to be
> >seperate from a verb.
QeS 'utlh:
>You would be surprised how many languages do this. <...> In Hebrew (I
>believe; Voragh would be able to confirm or correct this) the copula
>is most usually given simply by apposition,
Not usually. It is (rarely) possible to say, for example:
*Mosheh talmid yisra'eli*
Mosheh is an Israeli student, Mosheh's an Israeli student
especially with gentilic adjectives/nouns as predicates:
*Mosheh yisra'eli*
Mosheh is (an) Israeli
but the normal modern practice is to use a pronoun as a copula:
*Mosheh hu talmid yisra'eli*
Mosheh is an Israeli student
*Rivkah hi yisra'elit*
Rivkah (Rebecca) is an Israeli
and the copula is required when the predicate is definite:
*Rivkah hi ha-talmidah ha-yisra'elit*
Rivkah is the Israeli student
*Ehud Olmert hu rosh ha-memshalah*
Ehud Olmert is the Prime Minister
BTW, Arabic routinely uses pronouns as copulas in exactly the same way as
Hebrew:
*Ahmad huwa mu'allim
Ahmad is a teacher
*Fatimah hiya al-mu'allimah
Fatimah is the teacher
>and in Russian, in normal speech the copula is not used in the present tense.
The Russian practice is exactly the opposite from Hebrew and Arabic. In
writing an em-dash is usually used to represent this "zero copula" and the
distinctive intonation of such equational sentences:
*Ivan -- prepodavatel'*
Ivan (is a/the) teacher
Rarely one sees - or rather hears in colloquial speech - the
pronoun-as-copula, but such statements are quite marked or emphatic:
*Ivan on prepodavatel'*
It's Ivan who is the teacher.
Ivan, he's the teacher.
> >Despite it's conjugated in almost every language that conjugates verbs and
> >has "the copula". Theoretically, one could say this is marc okrand making
> >Klingon even more unique by having a cupola that "conjugates" per subject
> >that it is used with.
>
>While I can't think of a language that uses a pronoun-as-copular-construct
>in the same way as Klingon does (although Russian might come close), I also
>can't think of a single natural language that has a regular copula. {{:)
Though I wouldn't call it "conjugation" - perhaps "agreement" is better -
the use of pronouns as copulas in Hebrew and Arabic pretty much mirrors
that of Klingon. {rom} "agreement} may not be the right term in Klingon,
however:
Klingon grammarians refer to the rule that governs the use of
pronominal prefixes as the rule of {rom} (literally, "accord").
Grammarians of Federation Standard and many Earth languages
call the phenomenon "agreement". Thus, in the case of Klingon,
the prefix used must "agree" with the noun to which it refers;
if the object noun is plural, for example, the prefix must be
one that is used with plural objects. Agreeing is not a trait
typically associated with Klingon nature, however, and apparently,
at least under certain circumstances, this may extend to grammar
as well. [KGT p.172]
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons