tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 26 10:34:38 2009

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: Adverb placement (was Re: The topic marker -'e')

Christopher Doty ([email protected])



On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 05:30, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes. This is a sentence-as-object construction. The {DaH} applies to
> {'e' vIHech} ("I intend that now"), not to {jIQongchoH} (I didn't mean
> "I begin to sleep now").
>
> The first sentence in an SAO is not really "embedded." Sentence one is
> not "physically" the object of sentence two. The two sentences are
> merely juxtaposed, and the pronoun {'e'} refers to sentence one and
> takes its place as the object of sentence two.
>
> However, it's important to note that Okrand has never used an adverbial
> along with {'e'} or {net}, so we have no examples of this sort of thing
> in action. This simply follows the basic rules in TKD. There is only one
> example of an adverbial with a SAO in all the canon:
>
>    reH DIvI' Duj vISuv vIneH
>    I've always wanted to fight a Federation ship. (ST5)
>
> Naturally, Captain Klaa didn't mean that he wanted to "always fight" a
> Federation ship. However, SAOs with {neH} don't (usually) use {'e'} or
> {net}, so it's possible that with these the first sentence is, in fact,
> "embedded" in the second as its object. Without further evidence, we
> can't really tell.

But Okrand tells us: "When the verb of the second sentence is <neH>
want, neither <'e'> nor <net> is used, but *the construction is
otherwise identical* to that just described." (emphasis mine)

I see

>    reH DIvI' Duj vISuv vIneH
>    I've always wanted to fight a Federation ship. (ST5)

As

[reH [[DIvI' Duj vISuv] vIneH]]

<reh> modifies the entire thing, not just the object sentence.
Likewise, since these are identical except the use of 'e',

[DaH [[jIQongchoH] ['e' vIHech]]
"Now I intend to sleep"

Since we see that an adverbial initially modifies not just the
sentence which is the object, the whole clause that follows.

It seems like

[[jIQongchoH] [DaH ['e' vIHech]]]
"I intend now to sleep" (??)

Would mean the same thing, basically, with maybe a shade of meaning
difference?  The real issue, then, is how you would say "I want to be
always fighting Federation starships".....






Back to archive top level