tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 15 09:02:07 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Topic or emphasis?
On Mon, 14 Dec 2099, David Trimboli wrote:
> Ooooh! I'd like to throw in the suggestion that EVERY grammatical function
> of {-'e'}, like head-noun identification, etc., indicates topic. Take an
> few examples:
>
> yaS'e' qIpbogh puq vIlegh
> I see the officer who hit the child.
Umm..no. The DIvI' Hol translation should read:
"I see the officer whom the child hit." -OR-
"I see the officer who was hit by the child."
> As we know from conjunctions, adverbials, and so on, TKD frequently fails to
> distinguish between "verbal clause" and "sentence." (For instance,
> "sentence" conjunctions can conjoin phrases with verbs possessing
> subordinate clause suffixes.) Perhaps with {-'e'} disambiguation, one might
> consider {yaS} to be the topic of the CLAUSE, not the whole sentence. "The
> officer. We're talkin' 'bout the officer. What about the officer? You
> ready to hear about the officer? Here's what I'm sayin' 'bout the officer:
> a child hit him." It then goes into the main sentence as usual: "I saw the
> officer."
By that logic I can read the sentence thusly:
yaS'e' qImbogh puq vIlegh.
"As for the officer, I see the child who hit him/her [the officer]."
It's not a bad theory, and it can clear up a few things. But it doesn't
jive with current usage (at least, not htat *I* can tell).
quljIb