[93489] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: [Tlhingan-hol] mutually subordinate clauses?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Terrence Donnelly)
Sun Jun 3 23:38:01 2012
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 20:37:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: Terrence Donnelly <terrence.donnelly@sbcglobal.net>
To: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
In-Reply-To: <CA+7zAmN3kROMsH3d6FJQrDhUttDthvznKE6Cy0HM3PqNkmVqdA@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: tlhingan-hol-bounces@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
--- On Sun, 6/3/12, De'vID jonpIn <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect that most people would
> understand the following sentence,
> but is it grammatically aberrant?
>
> {mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo'} "If we do not arrive, it is
> because we
> have been attacked."
This seems like two subordinate clauses, and I would not accept it.
>
> Does it need to be recast as something like one of the
> following?
> {mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo' mapawbe'}
> {mapawbe'chugh vaj wIHIvlu'pu'}
>
The second option isn't too bad.
> (I didn't invent the original sentence, I read a sentence
> like it
> somewhere and understood it, but its grammar bothered me a
> bit so I
> replaced the words to form a grammatically equivalent
> sentence, for
> the purposes of discussing it.)
>
These kind of sentences with "It is..." always present problems to newbies. These are cleft expressions, and there is no "it"; it's just an English device to turn a verb phrase into the object of "because". If you want to stick to the spirit of the original, how about
{mapawbe'chugh, wIHIvlu'pu' 'e' 'oS}
or, sort of pedantic
{wIHIvlu'pu' 'e' 'oS pawbe'taHghachmaj.}
-- ter'eS
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