tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 13:04:03 2002
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Re: [KLBC] SISpu'
From: <[email protected]>
> This thread has gotten confusing enough that I feel compelled to make one
thing
> very clear for all beginners:
>
> Locatives are not subjects or objects. They are locatives. When you put
{-Daq}
> on a noun, it has to go somewhere before the place the direct object would
go
> in the sentence. It's that simple.
Actually, it's not that simple. There is a question about the exact
interpretation of this. In my opinion, locatives are not subjects or
objects. They are "headers."
Krankor has described the concept of another "case" of noun, the "header."
I agree with him fully on this interpretation. I do not believe that
"locative" is an equal with "subject" or "object."
Lucky for us, the differing interpretations yield the same sentence!
"RIT"Daq isn't a subject, and it isn't an object, so it must be a header.
As Krankor illustrated:
[H*] [O] V [S]
Thus,
"RIT"Daq jIHaD.
And as Will pointed out, there are a few verbs which include locatives among
their allowable objects. When using those verbs, you probably wouldn't need
to use a locative as a header: you can use it as an object.
> Clear your mind of any idea that a noun with a Type 5 suffix (except
sometimes
> {-'e'}) can be the subject or object.
This is mostly-useful practical advice, but it might not be theoretically
correct. Since we have verbs that allow /-Daq/ nouns to be objects, and we
have evidence that verbs can use /-'e'/ nouns as subject or object (I assume
we've seen both), it's not unreasonable to conclude that whether a Type 5'd
noun can be used as a subject or object depends on what the individual verb
allows. Now, it may be that there are NO verbs that allow Type 5'd nouns
other than /-'e'/ as subjects, and there may be other things that are simply
not allowed, but it's not definitely true that a noun with a Type 5 suffix
can never be a subject or object.
As I said, the effect comes out the same in the end, but I feel that the
reason WHY this is is still very open to interpretation.
> Subject and object are syntactic roles,
> and a Type 5 noun suffix defines the syntactic role of a noun.
> Subjects and
> objects don't need Type 5 suffixes because their syntactic role is
revealed by
> their position in the sentence relative to the verb. Objects preceed the
verb
> and subjects follow it.
This is more that may be practically true, but may not be what's actually
happening. There are other statements in this message that I feel fall
under this caveat, but which I haven't pointed out here.
SuStel
Stardate 2372.9