[87419] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Numbers with pronouns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark J. Reed)
Wed Dec 2 13:53:44 2009
In-Reply-To: <4B16AC35.9060607@trimboli.name>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 13:52:02 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 1:04 PM, David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name> wrote:
For all that pronouns equal "to be" in English, they're still just
> pronouns. They can be used in some verb-like ways, but they're still
> pronouns (or, according to Klingon grammarians, {chuvmey}). Saying
> {tlhIngan jIH} is the same as saying "me Klingon."
I agree with your larger point, but I'm going to nitpick this
particular analogy for one reason: verbal suffixes. If those suffixes
were unbound morphemes, sticking them into a sentence without a verb
would be unremakable; but they normally bind only with verbs, yet here
they are binding with leftovers. That implies to me that the pronoun
is rather more verblike than the one in the English "me Klingon";
after all, to say that you had been a Klingon previously (perhaps in a
play or movie), you wouldn't say "Me'ed Klingon".
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>
