tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Sep 23 05:42:42 2000
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RE: {-meH}
><-meH> can be a difficult suffix to bend your mind around, especially for
> native English speakers without much exposure to other languages. It is also
> (like *many* other things) not explained extremely well in TKD. It is,
> however, a wonderful aspect of the language.
> You've gotten the main difficulty of <-meH> - it can modify a verb *or a
> noun*. <-meH> clauses modifying a verb are easy for English speakers, since
> they parallel English fairly well, but they're harder with nouns.
> The other difficulty with <-meH> clauses is that they seem to sometimes have
> an implied indefinite subject (normally indicated with <-lu'>), especially
> when modifying nouns. A good example of this is the phrase <ghojmeH taj>,
> often translated as "boy's knife", but literally "knife for learning".
> There's no obvious subject for the <ghoj> here. It's certainly not the
> <taj>, since the <taj> isn't the one doing the learning. The HolQeD article
> you mentioned (I think; it may be another) does a good job of analyzing this
> phenomenon.
I think you mean the article "The {-meH} of canon", in HolQeD vol. 7, no. 3.
-- ter'eS
http://www.geocities.com/teresh_2000