tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 10 07:42:15 2008

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Re: Relative clause fun

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected])

• From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
• Subject: Re: Relative clause fun
• Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:40:39 -0700 (PDT)
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• In-reply-to: <[email protected]>

--- On Fri, 10/10/08, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I find these difficult to parse, even when I know what
> you're doing. The 
> trouble is that you have no way of knowing that the head
> noun isn't the 
> object in each case, instead of the (A) indirect object,
> (B) locative, 
> or (C) genitive nouns. They can also be interpreted,
> according to the 
> rules we know, as
> 
> (A) John is the prize whom they gave to the man
> (B) I fixed the alien whom I saw on the ship
>      On the ship, I fixed the alien whom I saw
> (C) He's the officer's gun which I fixed
> 
> I believe that, if it were possible to build relative
> clauses whose head 
> nouns weren't subjects or objects of the main clause,
> we would need some 
> kind of indication of this in the sentence, some kind of
> marker or 
> special syntax. We would need an explicit rule to recognize
> this; none 
> can be deduced from the scanty available evidence.
> 

I agree with this.  Another example, the {meQtaHbogh qachDaq} phrase, is parsable only because there is no other candidate for the head noun of the phrase, not because the grammar gives us any kind of marker. Some languages have resumptive pronouns to identify the head noun's place in the main phrase, but I don't know how that would work in Klingon: *{DujDaq nov vIleghbogh, 'oH vItI'}?

-- ter'eS

• References:
  • Re: Relative clause fun
    • From: David Trimboli <[email protected]>

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