tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 04 19:51:06 1999
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Re: Quantifier nouns: {Hoch} et al.
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Quantifier nouns: {Hoch} et al.
- Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 22:50:31 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- Priority: NORMAL
ter'eS, I like your argument. Besides generally making sense to
me, it also reinforces my use of the idea of saying that half of
the tribble is black works as {qIj yIH bID} because, of the
entire universe of halves, this is the tribble's half, and it
is black. If it were said the other way, then it would mean of
the entire universe of tribbles, half of them are black, which
is not what I want.
charghwI' 'utlh
On Thu, 31 Dec 1998 12:34:25 -0800 (PST) Terrence Donnelly
<[email protected]> wrote:
> At 11:13 AM 12/31/98 -0800, Voragh wrote:
> >
> >These number-like nouns - or quantifiers, as I'm going to call them - work
> >more
> >like numbers than nouns in regular N1-N2 constructions...
> An argument I've made before and am going to dredge up again:
>
> I don't see numbers or "quantifiers" (I called them "qualifiers" in
> a previous post) as behaving differently than any other N1-N2
> construction. Put aside Okrand's description of N1-N2 as a
> "possessive" form for a moment; I think that's just his non-technical
> way of describing ONE feature of the N1-N2 construction for the
> general public. As d'Armond noted in a HolQeD article a while
> back, there are plenty of N1-N2 examples in canon that show something
> else is going on here, too.
>
> To me, the essence of the N1-N2 construction is that the N2 noun is
> modified or restricted in some way by the N1 noun. That is, the N2
> noun describes the entire universal set of N2 objects, and the N1
> noun then delimits a subset of that set. I see this as explaining
> every known use of N1-N2 constructions, including numbers and titles:
>
> yaS taj - of the universal set of knives, the officer's one(s)
> peQ chem -f the universal set of fields, the one made of magnetism
> romuluS HIq - of the universal set of liquors, the one from/associated
> with Romulus
> Hoch yIHmey - of the universal set of tribbles, all of them (the original
> set and the subset can be co-extensive!)
> latlh yIH - of the universal set of tribbles, another of them (than the
> subset under current discussion)
> 'aqroS qughDo - of the universal set of possible cruising speeds, the
> greatest one
> pagh yIH - of the universal set of tribbles, none of them
> chorgh yIH - of the universal set of tribbles, eight of them
> enterpray' 'ejDo' - of the universal set of starships, the "Enterprise" one
> Qugh HoD - of the universal set of captains, the "Kruge" one,
>
> and so forth.
>
> This has always made sense to me, since the day I first learned the
> N1-N2 construction. I used it to predict the behavior of /Hoch/ and
> /latlh/ before we had canon examples. I especially like how it covers
> all the canon examples of N1-N2's under one convenient principle
> (except for the Skybox /HochHom/). True, a plural suffix can change
> the implication of the N1 word, but I don't think this affects the
> basic interpretation of N1-N2.
>
> -- ter'eS
charghwI' 'utlh