tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 21 09:25:06 1994
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Re: Interesting construction
>Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 02:45:50 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>According to [email protected]:
>..
>> >i pliroforia pou thimame oti [ti] diabasa
>> >the information which I remember that [optional: it] I read.
>>
>> I may be misunderstanding this, but I think this would come out in Klingon
>> thus:
>>
>> De' vIlaD 'e' vIqawbogh ghItlh tej.
>>
>> where {'e'} is the head of the {-bogh} clause.
>Interesting thought, but it seems to be going a bit far with
>chuvmey. My understanding of {'e'} is that it is a special
>pronoun that has exactly one grammatical use as a direct object
>of a verb while representing the preceeding sentence.
Note, though, that it's pretty much precisely the structure (minus the
-'e') that I'd been toying with which started this discussion. I'm not
sure that this is an unfair use of "'e'". After all, it *is* being used as
a pronoun referring to a previous sentence as the object of a verb. To be
precise, the sentence "De' vIlaD" is made into the object of the verb
"vIqaw" (to which a -bogh suffix is also added). I'm not so sure that the
fact that it happens to be the head-noun of the resulting relative clause
is such a hardship. After all, it's just doing exactly what it was meant
for. Besides, arguably, it's "De'" that is (indirectly) the head-noun of
the phrase, since pragmatics expands this to "The information which I
remember reading."
~mark