tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 27 06:19:59 2009
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Re: Adverb placement (was Re: The topic marker -'e')
On Nov 26, 2009, at 11:49 PM, Christopher Doty wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 10:56, David Trimboli <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> ...I would explain it this way:
>> reH [DIvI' Duj vISuv] vIneH
>
> But this isn't the same thing. If this is the structure, <reH> is
> only modifying <vIneH>, and would read something like "I am always
> wanting; I fight Federation starships."
You lost the object of {neH} that its prefix {vI-} specifies.
Correcting for that, a better reading is "I fight a Federation
starship; I always want it." Because {neH} with a sentence as its
object doesn't use an explicit {'e'}, the "it" can be (and usually
should be) translated as "that".
>> Even then, it's not literally doing what TKD says. TKD explains that
>> it's two sentences next to each other, not one sentence inside
>> another.
>
> I don't find anywhere that it says this.
TKD section 6.2.5 is consistent in referring to the Sentence as
Object construction as two sentences, repeating it in nearly every
paragraph. There is one passage referring to the entire construction
as a "complex sentence", but that description also applies to
otherwise independent sentences joined by conjunctions, so I don't
believe it implies that the SAO is one sentence contained in a second.
>> As another illustration, it would be perfectly reasonable to
>> punctuate
>> my sentence thusly:
>>
>> jIQongchoH. DaH 'e' vIHech.
>
> I don't think this is quite true, though.
Let's set this point aside and revisit it after you've reread TKD
pages 65-66. Try to read it as if for the first time, without the
intent of reinforcing your present understanding.
> I'm also a little leery about this "DaH 'e' vIHech" business because
> of this no aspect thing. If the second verb has no aspect, it is
> neutral to time, as Okrand indicates, then I'm not sure it's okay to
> put in an adverbial to indicate something about time.
I think Okrand's explanation is the other way around. He didn't say
that the second sentence can't have an aspect suffix *because* the
construction requires it to be neutral for time. He pointed out that
(in that specific example) {vIlegh} is neutral to time because it
lacks an aspect suffix, so its translation isn't constrained to refer
to a particular time.
-- ghunchu'wI'