tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 08 06:25:52 2002

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KLBC: emphasis



I'm not really a KLB, but I could not answer to this question somebody asked me at the qepHom last 
weekend.

it's about noun suffix {-'e'}.

1. thought:
  TKD (p.29) says "This suffix emphasizes that the noun to which it is attached is the topic of the 
sentence" 
  {De''e' vItlhapnISpu'} "I needed to get the INFORMATION" (not something else)

2. thought:
  About "To Be-constructions" TKD (p.68) says 
  "If the subject is a noun, it follows the third-person pronoun and takes the -'e' topic suffix."

  {puqpu' chaH qamapu''e'} "The prisoners are children."

----> Resulting question:
Can we make a combination of those two rules?
i.e. have two -'e' suffixes in a sentence.
Example:
{puqpu''e' chaH qamapu''e'}
"The prisoners are CHILDREN."

talking like TKD, this is translated as:
"As for the prisoners, they are children (and not something else)."

My opinion:
   I don't know. On the one hand, thought #1 looks like you can only emphasize one noun, since there can 
only  be one topic in a sentence, don't it? On the other hand, thought #2 tells me that any "to-be"-
sentence needs the -'e' at the end.

Quvar.






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