tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 19 08:00:19 2007
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Re: jIHtaHbogh naDev vISovbe'
Alan Anderson wrote:
> ja' SuStel:
>
>> In the sentence
>>
>> pa'DajDaq ghaH HoD'e'
>> The captain is in his quarters
>>
>> what English has as a preposition Klingon has, in my analysis, a
>> nominal
>> predicative.
>
> The previously given definition of a nominal predicative says that it
> "renames the subject". I don't see that happening in the sentence
> you give here as an example. You can't use {pa'Daj}, with or without
> {-Daq}, to refer to the same thing as {HoD}.
The predicative in a Klingon "to be" sentence isn't complementing the
topic, it's complementing the copula. This is why I didn't call the
topic of a copula a "subject" instead.
I'm applying the word "predicative" to Klingon grammar, not English, and
I'm defining it slightly differently than it is defined in English, so
don't get too caught up in its English definition. Klingon doesn't
really have an "indirect object" either, even though Marc Okrand has
used the term to describe certain formations. Instead, it has {-vaD},
which is a combination of English dative and benefactive meanings. This
is no different. My purpose has been to DEFINE a grammar that describes
the Klingon copula, not to restrict myself to describing it with English
categories.
SuStel
Stardate 7966.2
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