[86961] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: The topic marker -'e'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Mon Nov 23 10:29:45 2009
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:27:14 -0500
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <f1d476f10911230541r6d8f5dc9vfd7a5ec248c3aca9@mail.gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "mapum" might not be ungrammatical, but what is "mapum Sor"?? If we
>> translate literally into English, we get
>>
>> "(A/the) tree we fall."
>>
>> What does that mean? How can you write a computer program to provide
>> a translation of something that doesn't really mean anything?
>
> It depends on what priority you give various rules. If you make the
> rule of accord extremely strong, you are compelled to treat {Sor} as a
> first-person plural and it has a clear meaning (except for the dual
> meaning of {pum}). If you treat "person-ness" as an inherent feature
> of a noun and consider {Sor} as always third person, you have a
> contradiction in the verb prefix. We already deal well with
> contradictory objects (the "prefix trick"), so that's not
> automatically a deal-breaker.
But even with the prefix trick the verb prefix agrees with an object.
The prefix trick states that when the indirect object is in the first or
second person, the verb prefix may agree with the indirect object
instead of the direct object. The only difference between the standard
use of verb prefixes and the prefix trick is that prefixes using the
prefix trick agree with indirect instead of direct objects. They still
agree with the object they refer to. In no case has any rule ever told
us that verb prefixes may *disagree* with the objects they're referring to.
--
SuStel
tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush
