tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 20 19:35:11 2003
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RE: qatlh vay' vInuQ :)
On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, DloraH wrote:
> > Destroying. "If" does not indicate an action is occurring or will occur
> > in the future. I think any English teacher would agree with me on this
> > one. If you wanted to refer to the act of thinking, the English would
> > more likely be something like "It would be a rare occurrence *for* mobs to
> > think." Or the event would be cast into a subject, "A mob that can think
> > is a rare occurrence." I don't think the English is nearly as unclear as
> > the Klingon.
>
> "A mob that can think is a rare occurrence" implies that there are indeed
> mobs out there that can think, and that it is simply rare. Using [if] makes
> it a hypothetical situation, "If a mob that could think did possibly exist,
> even tho they exist (in this hypothetical situation) it would be a rare
> occurrence."
You're implying that it's ambiguous, but your recast of the English does
not disambiguate the issue, nor does it make your point clear. Are you
saying that you think it's ambiguous, or that it definitely must relate to
the subordinate clause?
If you were party to that conversation in real life, what would have been
your interpretation of what "it" was?
> When you and your friends chat (in english), is every sentence spoken
> completely clear and unambiguous?
Absolutely. ;) Of course not. However, when an ambiguous statement
comes up in conversation, it is obviously ambiguous and usually gets
followed by a question... "So I went out with that girl..." "Which
girl?" "You know, the one I met at that place last week?" "The dance
club?" "Yeah, remember, the one with the pink hair?"
However, in most of my conversations, it's not the grammar that's
ambiguous, it's the context. If someone's telling me about someone they
just met, they don't say, "I met that girl." They would say "I met this
girl." or "I met a girl."
C'est la vie.
...Paul
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