tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 19 04:06:20 1994
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Re: Apposition
On Tue, 19 Jul 1994, William H. Martin wrote:
> I guess I'm wondering why the reluctance to use:
>
> be'nalDaj ghaHbogh "Sarah"vaD jatlh "Abram".
>
> The {-vaD} is optional, depending upon how explicitly you wish
> to indicate that "Sarah" is the INDIRECT object. It would be
> legal to leave off the suffix, in which case I'd add {-'e'} to
> the end to form {"Sarah"'e'}.
I have no reluctance to using this translation, but I would like to
explore apposition for a while before rejecting it. If I used your
suggestion, however, I would have to change SarahvaD to Sarah'e', since a
noun can only be the "subject" of a nominal construction with a personal
pronoun if it has the 'e' suffix. This of course would leave us with no
way to express the indirect object in a sentence which did have a direct
object. Take for example:
Abram gave the child to Sarah his wife
which according to Okrand would have to be:
* be'nalDaj ghaHbogh "Sarah"vaD'e' puq nob "Abram"
This form is, of course, impossible since both -vaD and -'e' are type
five suffixes (I think; I do not have my dictionary here with me).
According to Okrand's Addendum to TKD, -vaD is use to tag indirect
objects when both direct and indirect objects are present. In other
words, we need the -vaD to indicate indirect object and -'e' to indicate
the subject of the nominal relative clause. Therefore, your
construction, which works in some instances, will not work in all
instances. This does not necessarily negate your construction for those
cases in which it will work, but it does make me want to explore the
possibility of using apposition.
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| Kevin A. Wilson [email protected] |
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