tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 15 19:20:23 1997
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Re: KLBC: names
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>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 12:56:34 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>
>On Wed, 15 Oct 1997 21:34:27 -0700 (PDT) Alan Anderson
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> >> }Tony means "priceless". However, there is no Klingon word for price or
>> >> }priceless.
>> >> }Any suggestions?
>>
>> chup charghwI':
>> >ngevlu'Qo'wI'
>>
>> nuqjatlh? chay' tay'laH <-lu'> <-wI'> je?
>
>ngev - He sells it
>ngevlu' - one sells it
>ngevlu'Qo' - one refuses to sell it
>ngevlu'Qo'wI' - one which one refuses to sell
vIlajbe' 'ej vIlajQo'.
The last step in that doesn't follow. "-lu'" indicates that the subject of
the sentence is indefinite. So there's no stated subject; the -lu' suffix
fills in the subject place, so to speak. "-wI'" also says something about
the subject: it says that the subject is the thing we're talking about. If
you will, "XwI'" = "Xbogh Doch'e'" or something close. Do you see why I
have trouble combining the two now? Both say something about the subject
place, and they're contradictory somethings. They overload the subject.
- -lu' is telling me the subject is indefinite and not to be considered,
while -wI' is filling the subject place with a sort of place-holder (a
lambda variable or something?) and saying that's the noun I should be
considering in the sentence place. So I have two rather different values,
both crammed into the same place of the verb (Lojban speakers, it's like
seeing "le broda be fa ko'a..." or something.) Your "one which one refuses
to sell" nominalizes the *object* of the verb, the thing sold; that's not
what -wI' does for a living. It nominalizes the subject. You mustn't
think that -lu' is simply an inverter, swapping subject and object; it
isn't (despite the prefix changes). The word-order remains, and the object
remains the object (which is why we're told it means "indefinite subject"
and not "passive.") I don't see how you can do this.
~mark
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