tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 11 00:45:50 1994
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Re: {-qu'}
- From: d'Armond Speers <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: {-qu'}
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 11:48:41 -0400 (EDT)
> One other thing: Most languages (that I know of) topicalize not by a
> separate, explicit phoneme, but by simple accentuation of the phoneme(s) to
> be topicalized. (e.g., "we are NOT afraid to kill you").
I think you are confusing a poorly-understood syntactic phenomenon
(topicalization) with a pretty well-understood phonetic/phonemic
phenomenon, stress.
> The exception of
> course would be tone languages like Mandarin, which topicalizes
> syntactically.
(Not that I speak Mandarin, but...). If this is the same process you
described above, then I'd say it's an even less-well-understood
process, focus. Otherwise, it's mundane, syntactic topicalization.
> That's why Klingon says {jIvumnISqu'} rather than {jIvum*nIS*}. {vum}, being
> the root of the word, must be accentuated (see TKD 1.3), and {-nIS} would
> have to fall secondary of lower on the stress pattern of this word. So,
> {-qu'} is used to emphasize it.
Your conclusion is crystal clear :) but the preceding arguments were
confusing due to the terminology!
> Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
Holtej