tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 18 04:49:18 1994
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Apposition
>From: "Kevin Wilson (DV 1994)" <[email protected]>
>Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 00:39:19 -0400 (EDT)
>Dear SuvwI'pu',
> In translating Genesis I have encountered a minor question of
>grammer. The verse in question reads something like "Abram spoke to
>Sarai, his wife." I have translated it as
>SaraivaD be'nalvaD jatlhta' abram
>The nouns Sarai and be'nal are obviously in opposition. The question I
>have, however, is whether the -vaD is necessay on both of the nouns or
>not. I realize that in English two nouns in apposition must share the
>same syntactical function, but I am not quite sure how (or even if) this
>is followed in tlhIngan Hol. Since in English both Sarai and wife are in
>a prepositional phrase, while in tlhIngan they are both just nouns, I am
>unsure how to make the comparison. The "to" can pull double duty in
>English; can the -vaD do the same for tlhIngan Hol? Or must it be
>repeated?
Required? Maybe not. But it certainly should. Insofar as nouns in
apposition are allowed (and I don't know of any canonical examples, though
I support them myself), we have to watch for confusion with N-N
constructions. "Sarai be'nalvaD" sounds to me like "to Sarai's wife". I
think in order to use nouns in apposition, they should (and I almost want
to say "have to") be in case-agreement (i.e. have the same type-5 suffix,
if any). In fact, someone (Holtej?) pointed out once that adding "-'e'" to
both members of an apposition pair is a good way to flag it as such and not
a noun-noun construction, since N-N's can't have type-5 suffixes on the
first member. I quite like that.
~mark