tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 15 07:59:03 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: _HolQeD_
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 05:39:57 -0700
>From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
>Well, I received the new _HolQeD_ this weekend, and it was quite
>interesting. I note, however, that Marc Okrand's response to Mark
>Mandel's letter seems to contradict Mark Shoulson's (eek, too many
>Marks!) observation about the difference between {Hoch}+singular and
>{Hoch}+plural.
>I'm referring to Okrand's comment that {Hoch nav HablI'}, which marqem
>intended to be "everyone's fax machine", could be interpreted as "all
>the fax machines" *because the plural marker is never required*. That
>note seems to imply to me that the presence or absence of a plural
>marker makes no difference in {Hoch} constructions.
I'm not sure there's a contradiction. It seems that we're using "Hoch" in
two different ways. In my article, we're discussing the use of "Hoch" as a
partitive. It enumerates how many X's we're talking about, and
distinguishes between singular and plural nouns following.
In Mark Mandel's article, the situation is with {Hoch} used in an ordinary
N-N construction, indicating possession/genitive relation. It's not the
same construction anymore. {Hoch nav HablI'} *could* mean "every fax," but
that isn't what we're talking about here. In this case, it's "the
fax-machine belonging to all," using the vanilla noun-noun construction.
So any special rules about Hoch and singular and plural don't come into
play, because this isn't a Hoch construction: it's a noun-noun
construction of which Hoch happens to be a part.
>P.S. This confusion between "all" and "everyone's" is one of the reasons
>I preferred the {X Hoch} syntax, but c'est la vie.
c'est indeed.
~mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface
iQB1AwUBMepcrcppGeTJXWZ9AQFs0AL/fqlf444PapxXoTSQzaw9FoXu8fTXR9gp
i+eh9n8iUw51+ZbH/8Fe7Nt0bLd3f02vBAVNwmew49rtEgB6sq54CBOV3RTezUAB
m5J3EWHMcZFIYnV1CQcQwFtlciOevSSE
=6bX7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----