tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 30 13:13:54 1997

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Re: "The ship in which I fled"



>Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 02:23:16 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Anthony.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>
>  Hereinafter TH = tlhIngan-Hol email group.
>  Excuse me raising this topic yet again. The only book that I have that seems
>to have information re how to use {-'e'} is TKD, which says only:-
>  (1) TKD 3.3.5 says that on a noun it emphasizes that noun.
>  (2) TKD 6.3 describes its use with a noun which is the subject of "be".
>  (3) TKD said nothing about -'e' in relative clauses, but TH says that Okrand
>said orally that -'e' can be used to mark the head-word in relative clauses.
>
>  TKD when describing relative clauses said that "the head-word can either
>follow or precede the noun", but did not seem to me to say explicitly that the
>head-word must be subject or object; all nouns in a sentence are somewhere
>before or after the verb. His examples, e.g. (puq qIppu'bogh yaS}, have no
>nouns except subject and object, but to me do not seem to say explicitly
>whether or not the asterisked translations hereinunder are valid:-

I can't find my HolQeD archives at the moment, but he rather explicitly
answered in a HolQeD once that the head noun of a relative clause must be
the subject or object of the relative clause.  Considering that many
natural language have the same restriction (see Nick Nicholas' article on
the subject) it apparently isn't too onerous.  Languages, believe it or
not, can manage without having an exact mirror of everything in English.

>    {pa'Daq verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD}
>    (A) the man who killed the Ferengi's targ in the room.
>    (B) the Ferengi's targ which the man killed in the room.
>    (C) **the Ferengi whose targ the man killed in the room.
>    (D) **the room in which the man killed the Ferengi's targ.
>  With -'e' these would become:-
>    (a) {pa'Daq verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD'e'}     - subject
>    (b) {pa'Daq verengan targh'e' HoHpu'bogh loD}     - object
>    (c) **{pa'Daq verengan'e' targh HoHpu'bogh loD}   - genitive / owner @
>    (d) **{pa'Daq'e' verengan targh HoHpu'bogh loD}   - with preposition
>      (@ = {smichut} for any Hebrew grammarians out there.}

This last (the Ferengi whose targ) is apparently the least common
permissible head-noun of relative clauses, among languages, if I recall
correctly.

~mark


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