tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 18 06:03:44 2007
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Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'
I have a really hard time taking this one early canon example and
running with it so far as to assume that it is okay to have a noun
function as head noun of a relative clause without that noun actually
being part of the relative clause.
You could easily say, "Well, I'm not saying that it is the head noun."
The problem is that a head noun is the one noun that has a grammatical
function in both the main clause and the relative clause. Obviously,
in "The restaurant where I ate" the restaurant is part of the relative
clause and the main clause. "Where I ate" makes no sense without
"restaurant". The reason "where I ate" exists is to describe the
restaurant. The reason all relative clauses exist is to describe or
identify their head nouns.
I could see stretching current grammar to say {Qe'Daq maSoppu'bogh},
in that it violates what we know by having a locative in a relative
clause act as the head noun, but since it would then be the ONLY noun
in the relative clause, you could probably figure out it's status as
head noun. But to put a "headless" relative clause before the noun
that pretty obviously is the actual head of the relative clause is a
bridge too far.
It would be a fine thing if Okrand would explain wtf he was doing here.
Doq
On Dec 18, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Alan Anderson wrote:
>
>> The relative clause is <<jIHtaHbogh naDev>>.
>
> Not quite. I'm saying that the relative clause is {jIHtaHbogh}. The
> head noun is *described* by the clause, but it is not required to be
> *part of* the clause. This is an important point.
>
>> As you further discuss with SuStel, the 'where' comes from the
>> locative sense of <<naDev>>. It doesn't result in any automatic
>> way from <<-bogh>>.
>
> That's his argument, not mine. My argument is that the {-bogh}
> *does* let us translate the clause using "where". TKD 6.2.3 tells us
> we can do that. I'm suggesting that {maSoppu'bogh Qe'} is properly
> understood as "the restaurant where we ate".
>
> -- ghunchu'wI'
>
>