tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 15 16:18:23 2002
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Re: tlhIngan Hol lujatlhbogh puq'e'
SuStelvo' tulwI'Daq:
>From: "Stephan Schneider" <[email protected]>
>> >qIbDaq SuvwI''e' SoH Dun law' Hoch Dun puS.
>> >You would be the greatest warrior in the galaxy.
>> >"In the galaxy, regarding warriors, you are the most wonderful of all."
>>
>> so /'e'/ can be a case tag. i wasn't aware of that. i remember that
>> one said that there can be confusion about focus and topic... i think
>> now i understand it better: /'e'/ can be either a case tag for a
>> focus or a topicalizer (that is not a case tag). qar'a'?
>
>
>Depends on how you look at it. In my own view, I see Type 5 noun suffixes
>not as "case tags," but rather purely as having semantic meaning. Whether
>the word's meaning in the sentence's context is subject, object, or
>"something else" determines where it goes. Thus, a word like /pemmo'/
>"because of daytime" will virtually never be a subject or object. The only
>Type 5 suffix whose meaning doesn't usually preclude putting it in subject
>or object position is /-'e'/, which can mean either "focus" or "topic" (and
>I don't like the idea of automatically saying that it is one in one position
>and the other in another position).
what did you mean in brackets? what positions?
>One reason for this interpretation is that it explains the unusual behavior
>of locatives and verbs of motion. You can say /juHDaq vIghoS/ "I go home"
>and it's perfectly valid. The /juHDaq/ is the OBJECT of the sentence; it's
>not part of the pre-object soup, the "header." Okrand has told us that
>several verbs describing motion can work this way. The simplest way to
>explain this is, in my opinion, to recognize that the so-called "syntactic
>markers" actually only impart semantic meaning, but that the meaning makes
>them show up in the header so often as to make them appear to be syntactic
>markers (/-'e'/ is clearly not exclusively a syntactic marker). It's the
>MEANING of the word that determines what its "case" is (subject, object, or
>header).
you're mixing up 'case' and 'part-of-sentence'. the type-5 suffixes
don't indicate the part-of-sentence (whether subject, object or
header). they indicate the _case_ (that's why i would like to call
them case tags). a locative (a noun with a locative case tag) can be
the object (part-of-sentence) of a verb, or it can be in the header.
we could also say that a focus (a noun with a focus case tag) can be
the subject (part-of-sentence) of a to-be-verb. and so on.
btw, i think case tags carry semantics, as the cases they form are
linked with the semantics of the verb.
>Please note that my expounding on this topic has previously caused no small
>effect on this list. I restate it (a) as a possible answer to your
>question, and (b) as an interpretation of what we see in order to arrive at
>grammatical sentences, and to explain WHY they're grammatical. I do not
>claim any kind of authority over what "is."
has there been a consent on this topic? :)
i would still like to distinguish between cases and
parts-of-sentence, so i still would like to see /'e'/ as a case tag.
neither do i claim any authority over all this, of course. :)
>SuStel
>Stardate 2622.9
sts.