tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 26 07:08:26 1997

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Re: Direct address (was Re: KLBC: imperatives)



On Wed, 25 Jun 1997, Alan Anderson wrote:

> The sentence doesn't have to have a second-person subject or object in
> order for the speaker to address the listener.  You can't find a place
> to invoke apposition in {HoD tujqu'choH QuQ}.  The semantic analysis
> of that sentence seems to act a lot like {HoD qaghomnIS} to me.

I'm not sure I follow you.  Why can you not use apposition in your sentence?

Direct address:
wo'rIv, HoD tujqu'choH QuQ	The engine makes the captain hot, Worf.
HoD tujqu'choH QuQ, wo'rIv	Worf, the engine makes the captain hot.

Apposition:
HoD, Qanqor loDnI', tujqu'choH QuQ	The engine makes the captain, 
                                        Krankor's brother, hot.
HoD tujqu'choH QuQ, yIrIDnganvo'        The engine, that junk we bought
veQvetlh wIje'bogh.                     from the Yiridian, makes the 
                                        captain hot.

Apposition is simply an NP that acts as a parenthetical expression, to add
more information about the main NP (which can be in any normal NP
position).  Direct address is not apposition, then.  Not semantically:
It's not adding more information about the noun it's next to, it's
specifying the audience.  Not syntactically: It's not restricted to being
next to a noun, but at the beginnning or end of the sentence. 

If you meant something else, then I'm confused.

> -- ghunchu'wI'

--Holtej



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