tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 23 00:24:09 1996

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charghwI's wish list (was Re: perpetual...)



ghItlh charghwI'
> What are the other questions we'd like him to address? Well, my
> personal list, as I can remember it (since I forgot to copy it
> forward from an old DayTimer:
> 
> 2. Give us a little more clarity on how we are to handle
> transitive/intransitive status on specific verbs. Ideally, this
> would mean having each verb in the vocabulary marked as one or
> the other, or some new grammatical algorithm we currently do
> not have to determine, for example, if I move my knife, is that
> {tajwIj vIvIH} or {tajwIj vIvIHmoH}, or either.
> 
> 3. Can I violate the "only the second noun of a noun-noun
> possessive can have a Type 5 noun suffix" rule to say, "I like
> the daughter of the man who sells shoes."? Since using {-'e'}
> to mark the head noun of the relative clause is a newer rule
> than the limit against using that suffix on the first noun, is
> this cause for an exception? {waqmey ngevbogh *loD'e' puqbe'*
> vIparHa'.}
> 
in both cases I don't see the need. maybe it's just that the
examples are not close enough to the point...

as for vIH: if you use it transitively, there should be
	no problem at all (i.e. you are understood);
	if you use it intransitively, there is the ambiguity
	that you just wanted to say that you 'generally move
	things around' when you say jIvIH, but aside from
	that I really can't imagine when one would need to
	say such a thing, most often context should make
	clear what you really meant

as for loD puqbe': I don't see how "I like the (daughter of
	the man) who sells shoes." :-) is less ambiguous
	than "(waqmey ngevbogh loD) puqbe' vIparHa'"; again
	I suspect context to be responsible for the
	clarification (i.e. the person you talk to should
	know whether you need to specify whose daughter
	or which daughter you are talking about)

however, if there are cases, context can't disambiguate,
I'd like to see them :)

				HomDoq

--
----------------------------------------------------
Marc Ruehlaender	[email protected]
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Saarbruecken, Germany
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