tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 26 12:14:04 1997
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Re: where do verb suffixes go in comparative clauses?
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>Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 01:48:29 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Anthony.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>
> Now that "the ship in which I fled" has been put back away in its hangar,
>here is another point that I apologise if it has been sorted out already:-
> "Korax is fatter than Koloth" is {qoreQ pI' law' qolotlh pI' puS}, as is
>well known. But what if the sentence needs a verb-suffix?
> "Korax seems to be fatter than Koloth" seems to be {qoreQ pI' law' qolotlh
>pI' puS} plus a {-law'} = "apparently" suffix with nowhere obvious to go.
> Is it {qoreQ pI' law'law' qolotlh pI' puSlaw'}?, since the law' and the puS
>seem to be in verbal role "is many" and "is few" although they are after their
>subjects.
> Is it {qoreQ pI'law' law' qolotlh pI'law' puS}?
> Is it {qoreQ pI' law' qolotlh pI' puS 'e' 'oHlaw'}?
> Or what?
> Likewise, if someone was expecting visitors to dinner, he might order: "Kill
>and clean the fattest male targh in my herd.";
> we have "In my herd, kill and clean the male targh which is fattest": but in
> {... targh'e' pI' law' Hoch pI' pus ...}
> I have put the -'e' on the apparent antecedent, but where does the -bogh go?
The law'/puS construction is known to be weird, and not to participate in
ordinary grammar. In fact, KGT reinforces this idea by pointing out that
due to its very uniqueness and unchangingness, there is a slang usage of
other verbs instead of law'/puS, since the structure is so fixed that the
verbs are less important. So I would think that *N*O*T*H*I*N*G* can
interfere in the normal construction of law'/puS. That is, it has to be
"Noun Q law', Noun Q puS", with Q being a verb of quality (a *simple* one)
and of course with possible substitutes for law'/puS. Even pronouns get
treated as nouns in this construction, which sounds weird to me, but it
keeps the structure absolutely fixed (so the substitutions can exist).
We've long been wrestling with the idea of how, say, to ask "is the captain
fatter than the emperor?" (where does the -'a' go?) Generally I'd expect
it to be done with stuff outside the sentence, like a "qar'a'?" tag. In
these cases, I'd say you have to do something like:
qoreQ pI' law' qolotlh pI' puS net Har (or "net tu'law'" or some such)
targhmeywIj yInuD: wa' targh pI' law' Hoch pI' puS. targhvetlh yIjon 'ej
yIHoH 'ej yIvut.
> And: The noun {loD} is "male, man", but what is the adjective "male" of an
>animal? {loD 'oHbogh targh'e'}??
Perhaps. *Possibly* "targh loD" (i.e. a male among targhs, just as we say
"tlhIngan be'"), but I'm not completely convinced that "loD" is generically
"male" and not strictly a humanoid.
~mark
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