[32] in tlhIngan-Hol
From the Grammarian's Desk
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 15:17:17 1992
From: ima.ima.isc.com!krankor@village.boston.ma.us (Captain Krankor)
To: tlhIngan-Hol@IMA.ISC.COM
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 91 07:03:13 -0400
Greetings to you all. I am back from vacation and have much to
catch up on; you will be hearing from me muchly in the coming days,
I'm sure. For now I just want to quickly address one error that I've
seen repeatedly:
How do you say 'My name is Joe Blow'? There are two right ways, and
two wrong ways.
WRONG: pongwIj "Joe Blow"
WRONG: "Joe Blow" pongwIj
RIGHT: "Joe Blow" vIpong'egh -or- "Joe Blow" muponglu' (or some other
variant using the *verb* pong)
RIGHT: "Joe Blow" 'oH pongwIj'e'
In short, you can't just put two nouns next to each other and think
that there's an implied 'to be' in there (the way you can in other
languages, such as Hebrew). There is a formal syntax for how to do
'to be', given in section 6.3, page 67.
So far I've only seen two responses to my 'what-is-wrong-with-this'
puzzle. No other takers? Shall I post the solution?
--Captain Krankor, Grammarian
"Sam" jIH. jIH "Sam". "egg"mey SuD "ham" je DaparHa''a'?
