[tlhIngan Hol] Noun marked with {-'e'} at the beginning of the sentence

[Alan Anderson]

On May 13, 2019, at 11:14 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The title of the thread was "[tlhIngan Hol] qep'a' cha'maH loSDIch New words and some tidbits". Sent on: Saturday, July 29, 2017 3:57 AM
> 
> There, qurgh wrote:
> 
> "I asked about fronting nouns marked with {-'e'} as described in the TKD Addendum. Marc said that {-'e'} fronted nouns are marked and it should only be used in extreme situations. He said one could, if they wanted to, use this all the time but it would be similar to an English speaking using Shakespearean English all the time."

Did you look at what the Addendum is actually talking about? It’s describing the occasional placement of adverbials after a topicalized *object*. It doesn’t imply that a subject can be moved its typical position following a verb just because it carries the {-'e'} suffix.

The idea of “fronting” a topic comes about because {-'e'} is a Type 5 noun suffix, and those tend to mark nouns as something other than subject or object. Such syntactically-marked nouns come before the object. So if you have a topic that *isn’t* the grammatical subject or object of the sentence, you put it at the beginning of the sentence where such nouns go.

If you have a pronoun-as-be sentence, the subject comes after the pronoun. Don’t try to extrapolate inapplicable rules to change the word order.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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