[92711] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: [Tlhingan-hol] To-Be-Constructions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Philip Newton)
Sat Mar 31 16:24:49 2012
In-Reply-To: <4F774C2F.80108@web.de>
From: Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:24:15 +0200
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-To: tlhingan-hol-bounces@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 20:25, Lieven Litaer <lieven.litaer@web.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> without giving my own opinion, I ask all of you:
>
> Do you see any difference between
> {A 'oH B-'e'} and {B 'oH A-'e'} ?
Yes - a difference in topicness. Pretty much what SuStel said.
> Going one step further, how do you say "My name is X",
{X 'oH pongwIj'e'}
> and why do you not
> use the opposite word order of what was your first choice?
Because typically I want to answer the question "What is your name?"
and not "What is 'Philip Newton'?"
So I answer, effectively: "My name? It's 'Philip Newton'" rather than
"'Philip Newton'? That's my name."
If someone *did*, for some strange reason, ask {nuq 'oH =ABPhilip
Newton=BB'e'?}, I would then probably answer, {pongwIj 'oH =ABPhilip
Newton=BB'e'}.
In general, copulas aren't symmetric, I think, since it's fairly rare
that they're used to signifiy identity - more often, I think, they
signify something else, such as membership in a set ("Lions are
animals" is not the same as "Animals are lions") or quality ("Snow is
white" -- "White is snow" is unusual, and would probably be understood
as a poetic rearrangement of word order rather than having "White" as
the "subject"(?) of the copula).
Cheers,
Philip
-- =
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>
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