tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 16 02:06:59 2000
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Why can't Adverbial 2 modify the "modified Verb" in Klingon?
- From: "qe'San (Jon Brown)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Why can't Adverbial 2 modify the "modified Verb" in Klingon?
- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 10:09:07 +0100
Reading Krankor's article in the latest HolQeD (9:2), I felt the answer was being given but that no-one had noticed it. I just had to reply here:
Can Adverbial modify Adverbials in Klingon?
What I want to ask is, "WHY SHOULD THEY?" We are told that the adverbial modifies the verb.
Surely that means that the adverb+verb could be said to be a modified-verb, and treated as an entity in it's own right. Therefore if we have a second adverb why should we wonder if it modifies the adverb? After what I've just said we could argue that the 2nd adverb modifies the "modified-verb". If it were possible for a 3rd adverb then this pattern would suggest that it would modify the "modified-modified-verb"
If we say
adv(1) - verb(1) = verb(2)
where "verb(2)" is the modified verb
then
adv(2) adv(1) verb(1) = adv(2) - verb(2) = verb(3)
and so on.
I hope that makes sense?
My clue to the above came from Krankor's statement:
The adverb "tragically" modifies the verb of the
sentence - how did the story end? It ended
tragically.
Krankor then points out that "ridiculously" modifies "tragically":
But how tragically? Ridiculously tragically!
But really in context it is modifying the "ended tragically".
In my example above "ended tragically" being equivalent to "verb(2)"
The whole concept provides us with an understandable process for deciding the order of adverbs when there is more than one (a problem mentioned in the article but not gone into).
I accept of course that this is just supposition until Maltz provides some insight into canon usage but it seems a fairly logical way to go until then. Especially if people "living" the language are going to use them.
The only thing not tackled so far is the case of neH. Would it modify
qe'San
***********************************************************
** NB: There are NO attachments with this email **
***********************************************************