[tlhIngan Hol] Order of adverbials and type-5'ed nouns

nIqolay Q niqolay0 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 9 08:16:12 PDT 2019


On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 9:51 AM SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> TKD doesn't make it clear which words have precedence for the beginning of
> the sentence. Section 5.4: adverbials "usually come at the beginning of a
> sentence." Section 6.1: any noun in the sentence other than subject or
> object comes "before the object noun." Section 6.4: those three question
> words "occur at the beginning of the sentence." Addendum section 6.7: time
> elements come before adverbials. Time elements are only described as the
> most common sort of element to precede an adverbial, so it's possible that
> other elements can too, though I couldn't tell you what they might be.
>
> Canon doesn't appear to be too overly concerned with carefully ordering
> these elements. I can't offhand think of any notable exceptions to the
> general rules, but I'm sure there are some interesting bits out there to
> find. The trouble is that some of the best stuff is poetic in nature,
> making word order suspect.
>
> In general, I go by this formula:
>
> <time elements> <adverbials and syntactic noun phrases> <objects> <verb>
> <subjects>
>
> Adverbials tend to float toward the front of the "adverbials and syntactic
> noun phrases" part of their space, though I don't think this is an
> absolute. If you always put adverbials before syntactic noun phrases I
> don't think you'd have any trouble. The three "beginning of the sentence"
> question words are essentially adverbial in nature, and should be counted
> as adverbials for the purpose of sentence order.
>
What do you mean by "syntactic noun phrases"? Things with Type 5 noun
suffixes? My interpretation: The addendum 6.7 says the adverbial precedes
the object-verb-subject construction, so my usual formula is to put it just
before the OVS, preceded by timestamps and type-5 nouns (which would still
put them before the object noun, as per 6.1). Time stamps come after the
type-5s so they don't somehow get confused for being part of the noun
phrase. I don't lump the question words in with adverbials, so I put those
at the very beginning. So my formula is more:

<question words> <type-5 noun phrases> <time elements> <adverbials>
<object> <verb> <subject>

Although it's possible I might be contradicted by canon. Clearly, we have
much to ask Maltz.

Here's a related question: Addendum 6.7 says the adverbial can come after
the object, if the object has the {-'e'} marker. Would you all say this
rule includes situations where the object has an {-'e'} to mark it as the
head noun of a relative clause? Something like: {SoSwI' tIchpu'bogh
petaQ'e' batlh vIqIp.} "I honorably hit the p'takh who had insulted my
mother." As opposed to the usual arrangement, which would be {batlh SoSwI'
tIchpu'bogh petaQ'e' vIqIp}, which could be misinterpreted as "I hit the
p'takh who had honorably insulted my mother." My confusion is because the
{-'e'} applies to the p'takh's role in the relative clause, not the main
sentence. After that question, a related one: What if the object noun were
the object of its relative clause? Like {SoSwI''e' tIchpu'bogh petaQ batlh
vIHub.}
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