tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 30 19:03:05 1996
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Re: My two cents.
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: My two cents.
- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 22:05:14 -0500
Marc Ruehlaender writes:
>> "Ich wohne nicht" (I hope I spelled that
>> right) is an acceptable sentence gramatically speaking, but that it
>> is admittedly vague. She says that you should either (1) put in a
>> place, or
>> (2) make sure that the context clarifies that the person
>> has no permanent residence, but is a nomad or hobo.
>I say No. A sentence that would express these is
>"Ich wohne nirgends." "I live nowhere."
>which again includes a locative.
It's obviously a strange concept, but I still see a real meaning in the
sentence with no locative. "Ich wohne -- I take part in the activity of
living somewhere." It's something I do. Where I live is unimportant to
what I'm trying to say. "Ich wohne nicht -- I don't participate in the
activity of living somewhere." Maybe I'm a night spirit, roaming the
world, and the concept of a home has no meaning to me.
Let's try a slightly different idea. If I use the translation "reside",
does the sentence "A word doesn't reside" make sense to you? Words have
no home, and it doesn't make sense for them to have one. I'm trying to
use the word intransitively. From your consistent descriptions of how
"wohne" is used, I understand it to mean "reside in", including the "in"
as part of its meaning, which would make it hard to use it with no object.
By the way, "nirgends" isn't obviously a locative; it looks to me like
it's a simple direct object. In order to test this theory, I need to
know how to say some things in German:
(1) "I eat a box." (2) "I eat in a box." (3) "I live in a box."
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj