tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 09 03:13:57 1997

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pabpo'na'vo': HoD Qanqor 'e' vInuD

	Captain Krankor's column in the HolQeD, which I just recieved, really made
me think. I had some observations and questions about it. First, I'm not
sure I see the difference between cardinal and presuppositional. For
example, take this:
paqmey vIparHa'qu'. wa''uy' vIghaj!
	Krankor asserts that this is cardinal, but technicaly, it can still be
translated as "a million of them," except the them refers not to specific
books, but to books in general. So, is this presuppositional? If I just
said <wa''uy' vIghaj> you wouldn't know what I was talking about unless you
translated it presuppositionaly, so it would seem so. I also think the two
examples from the TKD can be interpreted differently. The "of them" doesn't
necessarily refer to a specific subset, but to a thing in general. I would
agree with Speers in this respect: all number-as-noun phrases are
presuppositional. All the examples he gave are presuppositional; they just
refer to a larger subset.
	It seems that the difference is not really too much of an issue; if you
want a presuppositional meaning, you need context to begin with, and in
most cases this will automaticaly provide the desired meaning. The one
thing I don't get is "the -vo' trick." Despite the fact that "Two from the
warriors see me" kind of makes sense, I thought <-vo'> always had a
locative meaning, in that it meant "physically emanating from" something.
Why can't you say <mulegh SuvwI'pu'vetlh cha'>? This seems to make more
sense, and it can be used effectively anywhere. Is there a restriction on
this that I missed?
	For the final example he gave, I don't see it as ground-breaking proof, or
disproof. It looks like just another trick for forcing a presuppositional
meaning. Since, as Krankor noted, <Hoch> modifies <yabDu'>, It can be
translated as:
Your targ has a bigger brain than all brains (of your ancestors) put together.
The fact that we say "all of the brains of your ancestors" is kind of a
quirk of English. The sentence specifies "all brains," then goes on to
modify that group to only include those of your ancestors. 
	All in all, I think Kranor was right in that there are few restrictions on
the meanings, but I think that the whole thing is not a problem because
whenever you want a presuppositional meaning you can force it through
context or some other trick. I don't think new insight is needed; we just
need to use context wisely.
	Any comments, corrections, disagreements?

-HurghwI'

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