tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 09 10:21:20 2002
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Re: adverbials
Andrew jang ghunchu'wI':
>ja' Andrew Strader <[email protected]>:
>>...-mo' and its kin are really better thought of as phrase
>>suffixes, rather than noun suffixes. (See TKD 4.4).
>
>Uhhh...no. Not unless you choose an extremely limited definition of
>"phrase" to include only nouns optionally followed by a verb of quality
>acting in an adjectival manner (with suitable subdefinitions dealing with
>noun-noun constructions).
(i use "return" as if we were talking about functions in computer languages.)
there is a more positive interpretation, hopefully:
/-mo'/ wrapps a noun and returns a clause/phrase for the header.
>The only *real* exceptional thing about the placement of type 5 noun
>suffixes is that they attach to adjectival verbs instead of to the modified
>noun itself. You can get into real connotative problems if you try to say
>the suffix goes on the end of a "phrase" -- I think most people would
>consider {'u' Sepmey Sovbe'lu'bogh} to be a phrase, but {-Daq} goes on the
>end of {Sepmey}, not the end of the entire phrase.
that's interesting. /'u' Sepmey Sovbe'lu'bogh/ in a sentence could be
replaced by /bIH/. and /bIH/ is not a phrase.
/'u' Sepmey Sovbe'lu'bogh/ is a sentence. /-bogh/ wrappes the verb of
the sentence and returns the subject or object of the sentence, in
this case: /'u' Sepmey/.
> >Why does -mo' seem like a noun suffix most of the time? Simply
>because Okrand
> >chose not to put any space between a word and a type 5 noun suffix.
>
>Huh? {-mo'} seems like a noun suffix when it appears on a noun, and it
>seems like a verb suffix when it appears on a verb. Okrand chose to build
>the idea of suffixes into Klingon grammar, and suffixes don't have spaces
>between them and the word they are attached to. If he had chosen to put
>spaces between the word and the "suffix", they wouldn't be suffixes
>anymore. They'd be "postfixes" or something.
(they would be postpositions, probably.)
/-mo'/ wrapps a verb and returns a clause.
/-mo'/ wrapps a noun and returns a clause.
i guess there is only some confusion of what is being wrapped and
what is being returned. i hope.
> > But
>>spaces or lacks thereof don't really carry any grammatical force.
>
>Huh? again. Lack of a space is what indicates to us that something is part
>of the same word, making it either a suffix or part of a compound noun.
>Presence of an intervening space is what indicates that something is a
>separate word.
>
>> It could
>>very well have been "ram mo'".
>
>But {ram mo'} means "night's cage." Other valid interpretations are
>possible as well, but none of them involve suffixes.
>
>> It is important to remember that the entire
>>phrase is what goes in the header position.
>
>...Depending on exactly what you mean by "phrase", anyway.
i think we should use "clause" (because DloraH used it, hopefully for
the same thing).
it needs a name.
> >The bottom line is that a phrase like "rammo'" modifies the core
>OVS sentence
>>as a whole. That is, it's acting in an adverbial sense. And it just so
>>happens that adverbials occur in the "head" (or "header" if you like)
>>position of the sentence.
>
>I think you're causing more confusion than you realize with this "bottom
>line" explanation. You come very close to stating outright that adding the
>noun suffix {-mo'} to a noun *turns it into* an adverbial, an idea which I
>reject. Many verb suffixes also act in an adverbial sense, and many
>subordinate clauses do the same thing, but they're not what The Klingon
>Dictionary labels as adverbials.
your argument is simply that it's not the terminology of TKD. but TKD
is not enough to describe sentences. or as a member of the list said:
i whish Maltz had given us more words to discuss klingon grammar.
tulwI',
sts.