tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 20 16:42:02 2003
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Re: "to be" and plurals
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: "to be" and plurals
- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:39:54 -0500
>From: Quvar valer <[email protected]>
>Hm, weird. In english this would probably not sound so strange:
> "Most of his family IS maori"
> "Some of his ancestors IS maori"
>(btw, what's maori?)
"Maori" is probably the plural of "Maori," so let's choose something a
little less confusing for comparison.
"Most of his family are officers."
"Some of his ancestors are officers."
You MIGHT get away with "is" instead of "are" in the first of these
sentences, but it would sound funny to a lot of people.
>What is strange for me is the usage of {ghaH} instead of {'oH}. I know that
>{no'} can speak, but when one
>talks about "some", I start to think about this like "IT, the group of
>people from your ancestors" = {'op
>no'Daj}, ...
But /no'/ refers to "ancestors," not "group of ancestors." And vice versa,
/qorDu'/ refers to "family," not "family members" (who are called
/tuqnIgh/).
The oddity here is that, grammatically, /no'/ "ancestors" is singular, but
its meaning is plural. So do we follow the meaning or the grammar?
Given the "officers" idea above, I would tend toward:
yaSpu' chaH no'chaj'e'
"His ancestors were officers"
because you've got the sentence /yaSpu' chaH/ "they were officers" and a
topic /no'chaj'e'/ "ancestors."
>Other question:
> Does the pronoun refer to {'op} or to {no'Daj} or even {'op no'Daj}?
/'op no'Daj/ is a noun phrase, and the pronoun refers to it. But /'op
no'Daj/ would seem to refer to "ancestors," not a "group of ancestors."
> {nuqDaq 'oH cha'e'}
> "where is it, the torpedoes?"
This is what I would come up with if it weren't for the other weirdnesses
associated with this.
>Quvar.
>DIDabe'lu'ba'; DIDataHbe'!
mu'meyvam vIyajbe'. Hatba' <DIDabe'lu'ba'>: tay'laHbe' <DI-> <-lu'> je.
mu'tlhegh yIQIj!
SuStel
Stardate 3055.3
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