tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 25 10:03:43 1994
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Re: Interesting construction
>Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 18:33:14 -0500
>Errors-To: [email protected]
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>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?
Yes, I do. That's why I posted the sentence in the first place: there's no
denying that it takes some liberties and does some fudging; I think I
wanted/want some support for it... support which I don't appear to be
getting. Oh well, that's for the best, I suppose. Though the construction
is ambiguous in cases (as another post will show), it seemed to me that the
pragmatics made its meaning clear enough here. But obviously not; some
fine readers don't seem what I see there. I want the construction to be
right... but wishing doesn't make it so. Absent direct support from Okrand
(or *anyone*), we have to fall back on the real meaning of language:
communication. If a phrase doesn't communicate what it was meant to say,
it's not a whole lot of good (this is the basis of my opposition to
"hindsight words"--coinings which only make sense in retrospect).
Too bad. I liked it. Oh well.
>charghwI'
~mark