tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Dec 07 10:59:44 2007

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Re: Prefix and noun agreement

Robyn Stewart ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

If people hearing/reading you cannot figure out what you meant, then 
it is not right.

If the audience can puzzle it out but everyone comes to a slightly 
different conclusion and agrees that they have to backtrack--I don't 
know if ghunchu'wI' read my response before responding, but we ended 
up using the same word--then the construction has a problem.

If everyone looks at it, and knows what it means, then you can start 
to discuss whether it is pure ta' Hol.

I suspect it's pure something else, but I don't believe we have that word yet.

- Qov

At 06:39 AM 12/7/2007, you wrote:
>Alan Anderson wrote:
> > ja' SuStel:
> >
> >> Alan Anderson wrote:
> >>
> >>> The odd thing is that I don't have a big problem treating it as a
> >>> first person subject when the verb prefix asks me to.
> >> That *is* odd. What would you make of this:
> >>
> >>     qorDu' reghom qorDu'
> >
> > I'd have to get some inflection or body language help in order to be
> > sure, but my first reaction at the end of the sentence is a
> > combination of confusion and irritation at having been posed such a
> > syntactic puzzle. :)
>
>Between your response and those of Qov and naHQun, my impression is that
>everyone is trying to figure out what I meant, and overlooking whether
>they think it's *right*.
>
>Considering the minor confusion it and other constructions like it have
>caused (and given my strong distaste for it!) I can't help but think
>that non-agreeing prefixes can't be normal usage. I don't like the idea
>of claiming that a rule works, but only if you can make sense of it.
>Especially when the rule goes against the rulebook in the first place.
>
>I am, frankly, disappointed that so many are apparently considering this
>sort of thing to be generally correct.
>
>SuStel
>Stardate 7933.2

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