tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 29 05:53:56 1995
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Re: law'-puS in reverse?
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: law'-puS in reverse?
- Date: Sat, 29 Apr 95 13:53:11 BST
I'm not quite sure what charghwI' meant when he said that the Klingon
comparative construction is one of the few elements in the language
which really is specifically reflecting a specific human language,
but it seems to be quite widespread; it is found in more than a few
languages, belonging to different families and spoken in different
areas of this planet.
Terran languages whose comparatives (can) have the form of a pair of
juxtaposed clauses include:
(1) Loritja (Greenberg's language), Maung, Mangarayi (Australia);
(2) Amele, Kobon (Papua New Guinea);
(3) Hixkaryana (South America);
(4) Classical Nahuatl (Central America);
(5) Menomini (North America).
The precise structure differs from the Klingon one, however; in those
languages you say something like {tIn X, mach Y} or {tInqu' X, tInbe' Y},
with regular word order in each of the two halves of the construction,
for the Klingon {X tIn law' Y tIn puS}, where neither {X tIn law'}
nor {Y tIn puS} is a sentence on its own.
--'Iwvan