tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 03 09:14:52 1999

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

RE: Corrections from peHruS




jatlh peHruS:

> 3) MO says that verb pronominal prefixes INDICATE the subject and the object.
> Perhaps he does mean that these prefixes ARE the subject and object as well,
> without having said so explicitly.

Is there some syntactic argument you're trying to make that hinges upon whether the prefix
syntactically *is* or *indicates* the subject/object?  Perhaps the prefix is a clitic that
moves in PF ("phonetic form", for Chomskians), leaving behind a trace that is (optionally)
phonetically realized as a pronoun.  I'm not proposing this.  I would only bother to think
up a mechanism like this if helped support some other claim.

As long as the prefix is used correctly, it doesn't matter if you think it IS the
subject/object or INDICATES the subject/object.  Arguing about it one way or the other
seems like a needless irritation.  Both claims can be argued for given the description in
TKD, but it just doesn't matter one way or the other.  What do we gain by it?  If you're
going somewhere with this, please share it with us.

> peHruS

-- Holtej 'utlh



Back to archive top level