tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 19 15:06:41 2000
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RE: Use of topic as header
charghwI':
: If the conversation went:
: "Who are you?"
: "I am Seven."
: Then you'd be right. Meanwhile, if she said, "I am Seven of Nine," then
: "Nine" IS the topic of the sentence. It is the whole point of her statement.
{chatlh!} Or should that be {chatlh'e'}? <g>
"Seven" is the topic of both sentences and identifying herself, not her group,
is "the whole point of her statement". "I am Seven of Nine" is no different
from "I am Sarek of Vulcan" or "I am Worf of the House of Mogh" - the topic, as
well as the grammatical subject, is "I" in all these cases, not Vulcan or the
House of Mogh, or the Nine.
Side comment: Have you noticed how Seven still calls herself as "Seven of Nine"
even after more than a year alone on Voyager separated from the Nine. It has
merely become her name.
: She is telling you that there are Nine to be considered. The topic of her
: context of naming is Nine. Within that topic, she is Seven. If you talk
: about anything but members of the Nine, then you are off topic, and within
: your off-topic context, she is not Seven. She is only Seven within the
: context of the Nine that are the topic of her statement.
No. This might be true if the context were different, say if someone
unexpectedly encounters a bunch (crew? team? mini-collective? enniad?) of Borg
drones:
Q: "Who are you [pl.]?"
A: "We are (the) Nine. (I'm Seven [of Nine])"
Q: "Nine of what?"
A: "We are (the) Borg."
Q: "Where are you [pl.] from."
... etc.
Here the Nine - collectively (!) - is and remains the topic throughout, even if
Seven adds a parenthetical comment to her answer. The topic of the
conversation is defined by the original question "Who are you?" and not Seven's
answer: if "you" is {SoH}, then the questioner was interested in Seven; if
{tlhIH}, the Nine.
SuStel:
>> The "of" in English seems to indicate a subset. In this case "Seven"
>> is a member of "Nine." I don't think topics indicate sets for which
>> the sentence indicates subsets.
A subset, or a group she identifies with. (Didn't we have a discussion of the
partitive meaning of "of" some time ago, also without a consensus developing?
IIRC we were considering whether "Kill one of them/Kill one of the hostages"
can be, or even should be, differentiated from "Kill one/Kill one hostage" in
Klingon.)
You can usually replace the general "of" with "from" in English with no great
loss of meaning - "I am Seven from Nine," "I am Sarek from Vulcan," "I am Worf
from the House of Mogh" - though I don't think this works in Klingon. Although
"from" (like all other common English prepositions) often has a much broader
meaning than the strictlyliteral, {-vo'} is more restricted and seems to refer
to strictly spatial relationships. *{Hutvo' Soch jIH} - which I'm *not*
suggesting - is probably wrong, - unless she has been sent from the Nine and
thus her point of origin, not merely the group to which she belongs or
identifies with.)
One useful application of {-'e'}, though, is to signal *changes* in the topic
under discussion. E.g.:
Q: SoH 'Iv?
A: vulqan Sareq jIH. ["Sarek of Vulcan" (?)]
Q: SoH nuq?
A: yuQjIjDIvI'Daq vulqan Duy'a' jIH.
Q: toH...<<vulqan>>. nuq 'oH vulqan'e'?
A: juHqo'wIj 'oH vulqan'e'; roD yuQmajvaD *T'khasi* ponglu' neH. yoq
yIn yuQ 'oH 'ej yInSIp voQSIp je ngaS muDDaj. DaH vulqan luDab
Hut'uy' wejbIp loSnetlh SochSaD loSvatlh HutmaH wej ngan 'ach ...
Q: mevyap!
A: [Huy'Daj pep]
Lawrence:
>Am I missing something here? Why are you bothering with -'e' at all?
I must admit that I, too, fail to see the point (or is it the topic, or the
header?) of this line of discussion <g>.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons