tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 30 02:53:24 2010
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Cataphoric pronouns
- From: Andrà MÃller <[email protected]>
- Subject: Cataphoric pronouns
- Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:51:35 +0100
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Hey guys,
I decided to ask some more questions on parts of the grammar where I'm not
sure. Today it's about cataphoric pronouns. That is when you use a 3rd
person pronoun *before* you introduce the referrent as an overt noun phrase,
e.g. "His own shadow started to scare John." â?? this is pretty seldom in
German and English and sometimes sounds pretty weird if not rightout wrong
in sentences like "He visited John's father.", where "he" and "John" refer
to the same person.
In other languages, like Tsez (a small Caucasian language I'm familiar
with), this phonomenon occurs very often.
Now, when I construct Klingon sentences in writing, I sometimes start at the
end of the sentence, add the subject, then the verb before it, then the
direct object at the beginning and all the other stuff, usually because I
can process SVO easier and because I often translate something from English
or German. Then I sometimes come across sentences like this one:
{vavDaj Such wo'rIv.}
Worf visits his father.
The subject is an overt noun phrase, while the direct object bears a
pronominal possessive suffix. Thus, the pronominal suffix is used as a
cataphora. My question now: is this usual in Klingon, do we have many of
such phrases and do I not need to worry about sentence-internal information
structure, or am I translating too literally here?
Should it maybe be:
{wo'rIv vav Such (ghaH).}
lit. He visits Worf's father.
(this sentence would be ambiguous then, in Klingon)
By the way, is there a way to disambiguate 3rd person pronominal possessive
suffixes in the way of "his (i.e. someone else's)" vs. "his own" in Klingon?
Sujangchugh DaH Satlho'.
- André