[87614] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: qoSwIj
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark J. Reed)
Wed Jan 6 15:23:05 2010
In-Reply-To: <a1173fff1001061151g4fe8d958x7abd7faa46e6ffde@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:21:20 -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, Jan 6, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, in these non-verbal copular constructions in Klingon, I think
> that the pronoun (whether it be ʼitʼ or not) is always referring to
> the same thing as the ʼobjectʼ/predicate noun... In something like
>
> <qoSwIj 'oH>
>
> The ʼitʼ of <ʼoH> is referring to birthday--ʼIt is my birthday.ʼ
No, because then it would be a no-op, or at best a tautology. Saying
that "my birthday is my birthday" tells us nothing. The "it" must be
referring to something else, which the new sentence is equating with
"my birthday".
In the copula examples with a topicalized noun, that noun is the
something else (e.g. "today" in "As for today, it is my birthday.")
But in the examples without a topicalized noun, we're at something of
a loss to identify what "it" stands for.
So if it's raining, you say {SIS}. But could you legitimately, if
unnecessarily, say {SIS 'oH}? That's the question...
-marqoS
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>
