tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 18 18:11:39 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'

Alan Anderson ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

ja' mI'qey:

> +++
> predicative:  (grammar) An element of the predicate of
> a sentence which supplements the subject or object by
> means of the verb. Predicatives may be nominal or
> adjectival. A nominal predicative is a noun or pronoun
> that follows a linking verb and renames the subject.
> +++
>
> If we want to be precise, we're talking only about
> nominal predicatives, but since adjectives don't
> appear in pronoun-as-verb clauses, the distinction
> hardly seems worth insisting on.
>
> How does this strike people?

I think that it comes close, but it's not quite complete enough to be  
a good word for what we've been talking about.  There are two  
apparently distinct kinds of "to be" constructions in Klingon, and  
only one of them fits the "predicative" idea.  The other kind has a  
locative idea, which is neither nominal nor adjectival.

Klingon "to be" constructions are not a simple match for any  
linguistic term I'm aware of.  That's why I thought a word lacking an  
established linguistic meaning would be a good one to try on for size.

-- ghunchu'wI'

Back to archive top level