tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 30 17:46:01 1996
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Re: An interesting Scrabble idea
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: An interesting Scrabble idea
- Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 20:42:14 -0500
ghItlh [email protected] (Alan Anderson):
>>>>>>
SuStel writes:
[...]
>...{qIjDaq} [is] a perfectly legal word when it's preceeded by a
>noun, so would it be considered a legal word in its own right?
It's *only* a valid word in combination with a preceding noun. I don't
consider it to have an independent meaning. I might have to think this
through a bit, though; {-bogh} has a similar problem in that a headless
relative clause doesn't make sense either.
<<<<<
Would you consider "likes's" or "best's" a word? I know, Scrabble
doesn't allow words with punctuation, but apart from that?
[pause while you think it over]
...
...
...
...
...
...
I don't accept those as English words, even though they can occur
in sentences like
1. "That's the man my sister likes's car"
or
2. "The one I love best's working late tonight"
Even though these two different "'s"'s [whew!] (the possessive
"'s" and the "'s" contracted from "is") seem to be attached to
words, they are actually attached to NP's (noun phrases). They are
only attached to the last word in the NP in the way that an engine
is attached to the first car in the train that it's hauling: the
engine is there to pull the train, not just the first car.
I admit that the possessive "'s" usually becomes part of the word
when it's attached to a noun, but even that isn't as
straightforward as it looks. In
3. "There's my brother's car"
yes, "brother's" is a word; but what about (4)?:
4. "There's the woman who sued my brother's car"
(referring to a car, not a woman)
With respect to the attachment of "'s", (4) is more like (1) than
it is like (3), and I don't consider "brother's" a word in #4
(unless the speaker is pointing to a woman with a weird sense of
the law!).
Likewise, even though
<DaH yo' qIjDaq Suv vovwI'>
is perfectly grammatical, I don't consider <-Daq> part of
<qIjDaq>, but part of <yo' qIjDaq>.
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcmdr. Markemm, Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
** Mark A. Mandel : [email protected] **
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
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