[87584] in tlhIngan-Hol

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Re: qoSwIj

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Mon Jan 4 18:47:18 2010

Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:44:06 -0500
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <f60fe001001041508m717008c8h6effbabb23617a1@mail.gmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org

On 1/4/2010 6:08 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 5:45 PM, David Trimboli<david@trimboli.name>  wrote:
>> I suspect Thorwald meant to emphasize the "today," as you guess above,
>> but then you'd have to put {-'e'} on two different verbs in the
>> sentence, and that'd be weird. We don't know if that kind of thing is
>> allowed.
>
> Two different nouns, you mean. :)

Ya.

> Agreed, it seems odd to have two topics.  Does the -'e' in copula
> sentences have any emphatic force left?  If so, just making the noun
> you want to emphasize the topic would seem to work here.  But it could
> be that the -'e' is pure syntax at this point, in which case I'm not
> sure how one would go about adding emphasis.

I believe that {-'e'} is performing its primary function, which is 
topicalization. "Let's talk about my birthday. It is today."

> Tangentially related question: is the -'e' required to be on the
> second noun in a copula, or can it be on the first?

TKD p. 68: "If the subject is a noun, it follows the third-person 
pronoun... and takes the {-'e'} /topic/ suffix..." I don't think we have 
any examples that contradict this.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/




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