tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 19 07:29:46 1994

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Apposition



>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 15:16:42 EDT


>I guess I'm wondering why the reluctance to use:

>be'nalDaj ghaHbogh "Sarah"vaD jatlh "Abram".

well, this is partly the "ship in which I fled" problem.. after all, we
don't know quite how to use relative clauses as other than subject or
object, especially when (as here) the head-noun fills different roles in
the main sentence and the relative clause.

>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'}.

>So why wrestle with appositions in this case?

Mostly because "ghaHbogh" relative clauses seem so clunky and long-winded.
Yes, this is not a defensible position, but they don't seem nice
aesthetically.  Or something.  I'll grant that nouns in apposition as
subjects or objects may be problematic, but doubly-flagged "-vaD"s seem
very tranparent.

>charghwI'


~mark



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