tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 29 10:05:27 2013

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: [Tlhingan-hol] 'ar again

Lawrence M. Schoen ([email protected]) [Hol ghojwI']



<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">De&#39;vID:<br>
<div class="im">&gt; {&#39;ar} is both &quot;How many?&quot; and &quot;How much?&quot; In most cases one of the two<br>
&gt; will apply, and the question is unambiguous. However, in some cases<br>
&gt; there seems to be some ambiguity.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div> I suspect part of the problem comes from some misconceptions regarding the &quot;optional&quot; marking of plurals.</div><div><br></div><div>
From a pragmatic and semantic perspective, details of all sorts are considered optional is their inclusion is not significant.</div><div><br></div><div>Thus, if you present me with two items and tell me &quot;choose a weapon,&quot; how much information I include in my response will be dictated by the needs of</div>
<div>the situation.</div><div><br></div><div>If I just say &quot;that one&quot; and I offer no other indication (not even a pointing gesture), then my communication has failed.</div><div><br></div><div>Similarly, if both objects are daggers, simply saying &quot;I choose the dagger&quot; doesn&#39;t help either.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If one dagger is sharp and the other dull, I don&#39;t need to use the word &quot;dagger&quot; at all, and can just say &quot;I choose the sharp one.&quot;</div><div><br></div><div>I would argue it&#39;s a similar situation with the optional plural marker. Yes, in most cases you don&#39;t need it. But if its inclusion disambiguates an utterance</div>
<div>then from both a pragmatic and semantic point of view it&#39;s hardly optional any more.</div><div><br></div><div>Okay, that&#39;s all I have to say here. Now several of you can jump in and tell me that I&#39;m wrong. :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Lawrence</div></div>-- <br>author / publisher / psychologist / klingonist<br><a href="http://www.lawrencemschoen.com";>http://www.lawrencemschoen.com</a>
_______________________________________________
Tlhingan-hol mailing list
[email protected]
http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol


Back to archive top level