tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 03 16:25:14 1997
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Re: lI'Ha' tera'ngan mu'ghom
- From: "HurghwI'" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: lI'Ha' tera'ngan mu'ghom
- Date: Mon, 03 Feb 1997 18:28:54 -0600
At 11:00 AM 2/2/97 -0800, you wrote:
>beq HurghwI':
<bep HurghwI'> bIjatlh 'e' DaHech'a'?
>>After the recent discussions about "which?" and "only," I decided to look
>>them up in the dictionary to see exactly what they mean in English. To my
>>amazement, the dictionary proved completely useless. For "which?," it
>>defined it as "what one out of a group," or as it should have been, "which
>>one out of a group." So "which" means "which." What an enormous
>>breakthrough.
>
>You missed the point of that definition completely! The question word
>"which" is exactly the same as the question word "what" with the extra
>meaning of specifying "one out of a group".
Then this would seem to strengthen the point of view that <nuq> ought to be
usable in the sense of "what tea."
>>And as for "only," it didn't even define "only" when used in
>><it is only X>/<it is X alone>. It merely gave the adv, adj, and the
>>conjunction synonym for "but."
>
>The "it is only X" construction is a bit problematic. The word "only"
>in a copula doesn't quite fit perfectly into either the adverbial or the
>adjectival sense without further context to help decide. But both the
>adverb and adjective forms of "only" are well defined in *my* dictionary
>as "And nothing else or more."
Yes, at last I realized it was defined as an adverb in "known only to him,"
which is the same usage in a twisted way. My point was, it hardly did a
satisfactory job of clearing up my qualms on either of these words. Aside
from this, I have made peace with "which" and am resigned to use commands
when necessary.
-HurghwI'