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


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