tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 19 08:12:49 1999
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Re: qama'
- From: Alan Anderson <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: qama'
- Date: Fri, 19 Feb 99 10:27:44 EST
ja' peHruS:
>>>qama' vaghDIch DaHoHpu' 'e' qara'
>>>DaH qama' vaghDIch vIlegh yIntaH ghaH
>>>pa' qama' 'arDIch lom vIlegh DaH yIjang 'avwI'
>
>Your reader is consistently losing spaces. Do'Ha'.
The same "losing spaces" happens for everyone else who looks at the
list archives at /tlhIngan-Hol/ too. Please give
some thought to the grief you're causing by refusing to punctuate.
Don't worry about being "non-canon" -- Okrand uses punctuation very
consistently.
>And, the verb in the first line for which {'e'} is the object is {ra'} with
>the pronominal prefix {qa-}.
Oh. For some reason, that possibility didn't occur to me. I was
leaning more towards interpreting the last word as a misspelled
{qar'a'}, though that still didn't fix the apparent floating {'e'}.
Someone else has already pointed out that the verb prefix {qa-}
doesn't match the object {'e'}. I'll further point out that it isn't
at all obvious that {ra'} can ever have an object other than that
which is being commanded to do something.
>Yes, the purpose of this message was to use the contrived {'arDIch}.
But why did you contrive it in the first place? Indulge me briefly as
I present an analogy to what I see you doing here.
"We just discovered that bricks can be used as paving stones. Hey,
what if bricks were magnetic? And what if they were attracted to
wood? That way we could put them on the sides of buildings!"
Permit me to introduce you to the concept of cement. We can already
ask for one out of a group of things to be identified. We don't need
to fantasize about things for which we have no evidence.
ja'pu' charghwI':
>{'arlogh} addressed a concept that could not be recast. There
>was no other way to ask the question {'arlogh} asked.
Right. {javlogh} acts adverbially in a sentence; it's a standalone
word that modifies the entire action. Until we found out about the
{'arlogh} question word, we just plain couldn't ask how many times
something took place. {javDIch} merely specifies which noun from a
collection is being considered, and there's already a productive way
to find out "which" of a collection is important.
ja' peHruS:
>Actually, {'arDIch} should have a good chance. It follows exactly the same
>logic as {'arlogh}. {-DIch} is a number suffix!!!
What logic? Yes, {-DIch} *is* a number suffix. {'ar}, however, is
not a number, so there is no logic whatsoever in putting them
together. It looks like you're taking the existence of the question
word {'arlogh} as opening a door for putting number suffixes on
everything. One might as well take the existence of words like
{botjan} and {Saqjan} as blanket permission to tack {jan} on any verb,
but until there is an "official" description of something like that,
it's just unsupported speculation. The issue I see here is that it's
unproven, not likely to be understood, and completely unnecessary.
-- ghunchu'wI'