tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 31 12:32:40 2001
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Re: Questions
- From: "Trimboli, David" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Questions
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:30:18 -0400
This is not ambiguity: it's almost disagreement of the subject and verb
prefix.
There's a trick to this sentence. You might translate "We, the people,
speak" as /majatlh maH, nuvpu'/. Then, one reasons, since one may elide the
pronoun, dropping it will yield /majatlh nuvpu'/.
I do not care for this argument. It's a slippery way to make an incorrect
sentence look like it works.
The term that charghwI' was looking for is apposition. This is the placement
of two or more noun phrases next to each other. One describes the other.
Apposition is allowed in Klingon, and even used by Okrand in some
circumstances.
In my opinion, you can't use apposition with a noun (or pronoun) that's not
actually there. You can't elide the /maH/ out of /majatlh maH, nuvpu'/; it's
needed for the apposition to work.
The difference between the apparently incorrect /majatlh nuvpu'/ and /jatlh
nuvpu'/ is that the latter has agreement between the apparent subject
(nuvpu') and the verb prefix (0). There's no special emphasis, of course
(that would be /jatlh chaH, nuvpu'/, and notice how the emphasis only occurs
when you leave in the pronoun). Just because the (0) prefix could mean other
subjects does not mean there's anything wrong. THIS is ambiguity of grammar,
but the context (the subject) makes it clear what the verb prefix (0) means.
David
Stardate 1581.6
>From: [email protected]
>Reply-To: [email protected]
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Questions
>Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:12:00 EDT
>
>jatlh charghwI':
> >majatlh nuvpu'. "We, the people, speak."
> >
> >The prefix tells you the subject is first person plural. The explicit
> >noun {nuvpu'} tells you what "we" are: people.
>
>jatlh HomDoq:
> >the one objection I have about this is that in light of
> >TKD 5.6 I would interpret the {nuvpu'} as an address,
> >that is, I read {majatlh nuvpu'} as "People, we are speaking"
> >which not necessarily means that "we" and "people" refers
> >to the same entity (assuming context makes it clear this
> >is not a quote, meaning "we said <<NUVPU'>")
>
>I would consider this to be an instance of ambiguity. This can be true of
any
>subject, not just a first-person subject. For example, {jatlh nuvpu'} could
>mean any of the following:
>
>- The people are speaking.
>- People, he/she/they is/are speaking.
>- He/she/they said, {nuvpu'.}
>
>This is an accepted element of the language. I don't think {majatlh nuvpu'}
>is any different from {jatlh nuvpu'}.
>
> DujHoD
> [email protected]