tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 02 10:53:10 2009

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: Numbers with pronouns

Mark J. Reed ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 1:04 PM, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
 For all that pronouns equal "to be" in English, they're still just
> pronouns. They can be used in some verb-like ways, but they're still
> pronouns (or, according to Klingon grammarians, {chuvmey}). Saying
> {tlhIngan jIH} is the same as saying "me Klingon."

I agree with your larger point, but I'm going to nitpick this
particular analogy for one reason: verbal suffixes.  If those suffixes
were unbound morphemes, sticking them into a sentence without a verb
would be unremakable; but they normally bind only with verbs, yet here
they are binding with leftovers.  That implies to me that the pronoun
is rather more verblike than the one in the English "me Klingon";
after all, to say that you had been a Klingon previously (perhaps in a
play or movie), you wouldn't say "Me'ed Klingon".


-- 
Mark J. Reed <[email protected]>

Back to archive top level