[tlhIngan Hol] Verbs of measure

[Will Martin]

I didn’t say that it was ungrammatical because I don’t believe that it’s ungrammatical. I think it’s misguided, because I don’t think the meaning is as clear as it sounds like the original poster wanted it to be, and I think that, like I said, it is something you can get away with in conversational speech on rare occasions, but if you somehow latch onto the idea that this is fine, this is normal, this is well-constructed, then you are mistaken for the very reason that it made the original poster uncomfortable, and for the same reason that SuStel was less than enthusiastic about endorsing the practice.

The missing pronoun that acts as subject of the second verb is functioning the same way as the pronoun {‘e’} functions in a Sentence As Object construction. It represents the previous sentence.

This is not ungrammatical. It’s merely hideous, when it tries to formalize a general rule of what is okay to do, when Klingon has no such rule.

I mean, if you can just imagine a pronoun that can act as subject of the second sentence and represent the first sentence, why not just imagine a pronoun acting as object of the second sentence that represents the first sentence? Poof! No need for {‘e’} or {net}. Any sentence can just be invisibly represented by any unstated pronoun acting as subject or object in the following sentence.

That path leads to chaos.

So, I repeat, it is not ungrammatical. It is merely hideous. You can’t rely on your reader/listener to consistently realize, “OH, I GET IT. THAT UNSTATED SUBJECT OF THE SECOND VERB REPRESTENTS THE ENTIRE PREVIOUS SENTENCE. WHAT A GREAT IDEA? WHY DIDN’T OKRAND THINK OF THAT?

Am I clear yet?

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Mar 27, 2019, at 11:13 AM, nIqolay Q <niqolay0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 11:03 PM SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
> On 3/26/2019 9:08 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:
>> I admit that it doesn't appear to be a very common construction, but with four canonical examples (four and a half, maybe, with rIntaH), I can't agree that it's ungrammatical. 
> Who said it's ungrammatical?
> 
> charghwI''s post definitely gave me the impression that he thought it was ungrammatical, although he managed to not use that specific word.
> 
> Well, if nothing else, it was nice to read paq'batlh again.
> _______________________________________________
> tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20190327/1327e6f7/attachment-0010.htm>