tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 22 23:16:34 1994

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Re: Interesting construction

>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."

Altho {De'} and {'e'} mean about the same in this case. That's the only
reason you could make {De'} the head noun without serious problems. To prove
this, what if the sentence before the {'e'} was something like {Duj vIbach}.
In a whole sentence without the topic marker distinction, I would be hard
pressed to say whether {'e'} was the head noun, or whether it was some noun
in the sentence before the {'e'} pronoun. It would all depend on the context,
I would guess. In effect, it works both ways, theoretically:

{Duj vIbach 'e' vIqawbe'bogh legh Sogh}
The leiutenant saw my shooting of the ship which I don't remember

where {'e'} is head noun. This works ok, as long as {'e'} is the head noun,
and so it must be the object always, i.e., only one verb will come in front
of it, and that will be the verb of the sentence of which {'e'} is
antecedent. But if we were to consider that nouns in the sentence represented
by {'e'} could be head nouns, then we have to ask if this sentence might also
say, "The leiutenant sees the ship which I don't remember shooting". Topic
markers can sort all this out.

1.{Duj'e' vIbach 'e' qawbe'bogh Sogh toD tera'ngan Duy}
The ship which the leiutenant doesn't remember me shooting was saved by the
Terran emissary

2.{tera'ngan Duy toDruppu' Duj'e' vIbach 'e' qawbe'bogh Sogh}
The ship which the leiutenant doesn't remember me shooting had been ready to
save the Terran emissary

3.{tera'ngan Duy toDruppu' Duj vIbach 'e' qawbogh Sogh'e'}
The leiutenant who remembers me shooting the ship had been ready to save the
Terran emissary

I do not see any problems with any of these construction as far as ambiguity
is concerned. I know that people will rush in to criticize this mainly
because it's new and doesn't look like anything that's been done before. But
I can't see any problems with it. There is no ambiguity involved, except if
we want there to be, by leaving out the appropriate {-'e'} to distinguish the
head noun. And also it does not violate any principles of Klingon grammar.
And that is what's called a *functionalism*.

Even so, I don't expect this construction to pop up any more now that it ever
had before!!! It is not common in English, but rather occurs much more
frequently and on a grammatically stabler base in certain other languages.
Thus, to reiterate a point I tried earlier to make, I did not extrapolate
this from English. I merely deduced what seemed right (to me), knowing
offhand how some other language function, and came up with it. My use of it
in Hamlet does not in fact reflect on the English grammar at all, charghwI'.

It actually works quite nicely in Klingon, whereas the construction "It is a
good/bad day to..." does not work at all in Klingon, no matter how hard you
try.

>~mark

Guido

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