tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 04 15:46:33 2010
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Re: qoSwIj
On 1/4/2010 6:08 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 5:45 PM, David Trimboli<[email protected]> wrote:
>> I suspect Thorwald meant to emphasize the "today," as you guess above,
>> but then you'd have to put {-'e'} on two different verbs in the
>> sentence, and that'd be weird. We don't know if that kind of thing is
>> allowed.
>
> Two different nouns, you mean. :)
Ya.
> Agreed, it seems odd to have two topics. Does the -'e' in copula
> sentences have any emphatic force left? If so, just making the noun
> you want to emphasize the topic would seem to work here. But it could
> be that the -'e' is pure syntax at this point, in which case I'm not
> sure how one would go about adding emphasis.
I believe that {-'e'} is performing its primary function, which is
topicalization. "Let's talk about my birthday. It is today."
> Tangentially related question: is the -'e' required to be on the
> second noun in a copula, or can it be on the first?
TKD p. 68: "If the subject is a noun, it follows the third-person
pronoun... and takes the {-'e'} /topic/ suffix..." I don't think we have
any examples that contradict this.
--
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/
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