tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 25 10:21:24 1994
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Interesting construction
>Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 22:17:14 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected]
>>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."
This is the post I referred to in my other one...
>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
These various readings I hadn't considered.... but your analysis of them
(and disambiguation techniques therefor) are very good. Again, I don't
feel Klingon *must* be perfectly Wunambiguous--few languages are. But it's
nice to see ways to speak more specifically.
>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.
Thanks for the favorable opinion! I dunno, maybe I won't give up as much
as I had! Well, in any case, there doesn't seem to be that much call for
this type of construction, or we'd have seen more of it before. If nothing
else, it's interesting stuff to think about, but I doubt it's really
"ready for prime-time" as it were.
>>~mark
>Guido
~mark