[tlhIngan Hol] law' puS with the -taHvIS and type-9 clauses preceding each element

[De'vID]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 15:52, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:

> You are rejecting my point simply because you don’t like the conclusion.
>

No, I'm trying to get you to understand how your point is simply irrelevant
to the discussion.


> You are determined to press your case fixating on the MEANING of a
> Replacement Proverb, which we cannot understand because it’s an ancient
> proverb fossilized and repeated until nobody knows what it means, but they
> know when to say it, like responding to a surprising revelation in English
> with, “How about that!”, which uses a combination of words that make no
> sense together whatsoever, but we all know “what it means” because we’ve
> witnessed so many people utter it under similar circumstances.
>

Let's use your analogy: <out of habit/courtesy or “Ga-Zoon-Height”, even if
they don’t know German. This might be like that.>

Let's say that we don't know German, but we're told that "Ga-Zoon-Height"
means "to your health". We might ask, "How does Ga-Zoon-Height" mean "to
your health"? "Does Height mean health in German?", etc. Given a sentence
and its translation between English and another language, we can ask: "how
does this sentence have this translation?" It does not matter the original
reason why German-speakers say the word "Gesundheit" when someone sneezes.

Imagine that {reH latlh qabDaq qul tuj law' Hoch tuj puS} came up in a
regular conversation, and wasn't being used as a replacement proverb. We're
told its translation is "The fire is always hotter on someone else's face."
Why does it mean that? That's a question that can be asked, independently
of the fact that that sentence happens to be a replacement proverb.

If you're uninterested in the grammar of the sentence, that's one thing.
But the fact that a sentence is a Replacement Proverb doesn't make its
*grammar* impervious to analysis. (Its *meaning* may be lost to time, but
that's a different thing.)


> Explain what “How about that!” means in English, breaking down the grammar
> and explaining the choice of each word in relation to the meaning of the
> sentence.
>

This isn't an analogous situation at all.

-- 
De'vID
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