tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 16 07:28:12 1993
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wa' yu'ghachHom
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 23:03:29 -0400 (EDT)
>How would one say "I am bigger than you." Somehow, I don't like
>*{jIH tIn law' SoH tIn puS}
>Suppose it's *{jItIn law' bItIn puS} where {law'} and {puS} really are
>something like "be greater than, be less than," respectively, in such
>a construction. Maybe the subject-verb syntax is not another isolated
>incident since we did find that Okrand asserted a similar odd syntax when
>dealing with the optative suffix {-jaj}.
>I don't expect anyone to be able to validate or invalidate any of these
>theories; I'd just like a little feedback.
Very interesting. And it makes some sense. {jIH tIn law'...} doesn't
sound good to me either (though absent any solid evidence, that's what I'd
use). The law'/puS construction has long been a tough nut, not quite
looking like nouns or verbs (word order wrong, etc). Okrand's
semi-explanation opens up another possible form, too. He says that {la'
jaq law' yaS jaq puS} is like "the commander's boldness is many, the
officer's boldness is few". So maybe it's like a noun-noun construction,
with the "-ghach" (if required) elided for whatever reason. This would
make your sentence into *{tInwIj law' tInlIj puS}, for what that's worth.
~mark
P.S. I'm also not seriously recommending we adopt any of these proposals
without hearing from Okrand; just throwing ideas around.