tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 22 09:54:14 1994

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Re: Interesting construction

According to Mark E. Shoulson:
> 
...
> >> 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."

My point is that this indirect nature of the link screws things
up for me. When I see:

De' vIlaD 'e' vIqawbogh ghItlh tej.

I read this as "A scientist writes that which I remember: that
I read the information." The pronoun {'e'} does not replace the
noun {De'}. It replaces the sentence {De' vIlaD}. I am not
remembering the information which I read. I am remembering that
I read the information. The scientist is writing that which I
remember, which is not the information itself, but instead the
fact that I read the information.

See?

Perhaps it would be less confusing as:

De''e' ghItlhta'bogh tej vIlaDpu' 'e' vIqaw.

> ~mark
> 

charghwI'

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