[87615] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: qoSwIj
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Doty)
Wed Jan 6 15:29:28 2010
In-Reply-To: <f60fe001001061221x1d3ad7e2je899bcf7c706528c@mail.gmail.com>
From: Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 12:27:57 -0800
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
No.
If you ask someone what something is, and they reply that ʼIt is a
penʼ, ʼitʼ and ʼpenʼ are the same thing... The ʼitʼ doesnʼt magickally
stand for something else that you have to figure out...
This isnʼt a tautology, youʼre providing a label for the it...
Chris
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:21, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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>
>
>
>
>
