tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 16 20:57:51 2002
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Re: Hech (was: Re: SajwIj)
From: "Sean Healy" <[email protected]>
> So what you're saying is that the 'to' in the definition (combined with
the
> fact all canon examples of {Hech} take {'e'}) leads you to believe that
> {Hech} can only take {'e'} as its object, sort of an implied exception to
> the general notion that {'e'} and a noun object are interchangeable. [...]
I'm saying that I believe /'e'/ is the only object that makes SENSE with
/Hech/. Grammatically, /'e'/ is always an object, and nouns can be objects
too. There's no GRAMMATICAL reason why some noun can't be the object of
/Hech/, but then there's also no grammatical reason why some noun can't be
the object of, say, /Qong/. /quS vIQong/ is a grammatical and nonsensical
sentence.
> I would formulate that implied exception as follows:
>
> {Hech} can only be used in the construction [SENTENCE 'e' -Hech-] (dashes
> represent prefix and suffixes), and only when the main verb of SENTENCE
has
> the same subject as {Hech}. ([SENTENCE 'e'] can be implied by context
> rather than specifically stated.)
How do you determine that the subject of SENTENCE must be the same as the
subject of /Hech/? Because two canonical examples do so? I can imagine
other possibilities. For instance,
tach wIghoS maH 'e' vIHech jIH.
I intended for us to go to the bar.
> This gets us away from English notions of the infinitive. Thanks for your
> explanation and canon example.
I think it's simply a matter of identifying the set of semantically allowed
objects for /Hech/. The problems lie in the odd definition in TKD and the
varying definitions of the English words involved.
SuStel
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