tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 24 10:08:43 1994

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Re: Interesting construction



AAAARRRRRRGH!

According to [email protected]:
... 
> 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

This is exactly my point. This does NOT say, "The leiutenant
saw the ship, which I don't remember shooting." It is the act
of shooting the ship which the leiutenant saw.

> 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

Sorry. This doesn't work. "The Terran missionary saved the
leiutenant, who doesn't remember that I shot the SHIP." I just
don't believe that the topicalizer can stretch out that far to
tag the ship as the object. Realize that in Klingon, THIS IS
REALLY TWO SEPARATE SENTENCES. For human convenience, we write
them as one. A topicalizer in the first sentence cannot make a
noun there the object of the second sentence.

> 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

Similarly, this is meaningless because {'e' qawbe'bogh Sogh} is
not a complete sentence, and in Klingon Sentence As Object
construction, IT NEEDS TO BE. In Klingon, what we take to be
one sentence is actually two separate sentences with {'e'}
representing the first sentence within the second sentence.

Buy a clue.

[charghwI' tries to follow his own advice and get a grip.]
Okay, okay. It's just that I feel like this thread goes on and
on and nobody is listening to me explain that it has escaped
from Klingon grammar and continues to run onward, though it has
no justification for its continuance. Sorry for the flame. I
just want to stop reading these things as they continue to
claim validity when they don't have any.

> 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

Again, the second sentence is incomplete.
 
> I do not see any problems with any of these construction as far as ambiguity
> is concerned. 

Ambiguity is not the point. This simply is not correctly formed
Klingon grammar. It is not NEARLY correct.

> 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*.

No, the problem is that you are ignoring the structure of
Sentence As Object, which is at the core of what you are trying
to do.

> 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'.

Well, this is a valid set of constructions in English, but not
in Klingon, in Hamlet or anywhere else.

> 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
> 

Okay, okay. I'll be nice. I gotta go make bread. Kneading will
do me good.

charghwI'
-- 

 \___
 o_/ \
 <\__,\
  ">   | Get a grip.
   `   |


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