tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 11 12:58:04 1996

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Re: partitives

[regarding {pagh jupwI'}]

qon Holtej:
>It's something I'd like to know more about.  Given the discussion in TKD =
>and canon, we don't have any evidence to support "none of my friends," =
>that I know of, the dubious /HochHom/ example notwithstanding.

I found one!  How about {Dal pagh jagh} from TKW?  (I'm going from 
memory, so I really hope I'm not misremembering it.)

Okrand himself says this is ambiguous; that sure seems like supporting
evidence to me. :-)  "None of the enemies is boring."  "There are no 
boring enemies."  (Yep, that looks about right.)

Maybe {pagh} has some special status.  Maybe the ambiguity is between
"none" and "zero", and "real" numbers still can not have partitive
meaning when they precede a noun.  But the phrase I used that started 
this -- {pagh jupwI' Sum} -- looks like it indeed can legitimately 
mean "none of my nearby friends".

-- ghunchu'wI'

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