tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 27 00:57:36 2009

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Re: The topic marker -'e'

Andrà MÃller ([email protected])



I thought the problem was the claim that {ghaHvaD taj} is ungrammatical (is
it?), because a noun with {-vaD} cannot work as a mere attribute to another
noun. In the same way, in German "ihm ein Messer" (him a knife) doesn't
work, because it cannot be a noun phrase. It always needs a sentence (and
thus a verb).
This is what I thought was the claim. I dunno if that's really what's going
on.

- André

2009/11/27 Christopher Doty <[email protected]>

> I'm not sure exactly what I meant there (I blame the relatives again),
> but I think it was this.
>
> The difference between "a for him knife" and "a knife for him" in
> English is that the first one is ungrammatical: "for him" can't be an
> adjective.  We see the same thing in Klingon (from my perspective):
> <ghaHvaD taj> is fine ("a knife for him"), but <taj ghaHvaD> is bad: a
> noun with -vaD can't go after a noun to modify it, as a verb of
> quality/quantity could.  You have to put it before the noun.  But,
> it's also expressly not part of a noun-noun construction.
>
> I dunno, I am full of food and feel like we're at a dead end here.  I
> still just don't see how <ghaHvaD taj> and the like is a problem, and
> I haven't seen anything here that convinces me otherwise.
>
> Do you think <ghaHvaD taj 'oH> is bad as well?
>
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 18:19, Mark J. Reed <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Indeed.  How can it be read any other way but "for him" modifying
> > "knife"?  Certainly that's how you'd diagram the phrase in English: an
> > adjectival prepositional phrase modifying "knife".  (With some context
> > it could be adverbial instead, modifying something else...)
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 9:14 PM, David Trimboli <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >> Christopher Doty wrote:
> >>> It's not, e.g., 'a for-him knife', it's 'a knife for him.'
> >>
> >> What's the difference?
> >>
> >> --
> >> SuStel
> >> tlhIngan Hol MUSH
> >> http://trimboli.name/mush
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Mark J. Reed <[email protected]>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>





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