On 9/2/2020 11:47 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
On Sep 2, 2020, at 7:16 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
If you want to distinguish speaking targets from body-part targets from other targets, you need to do so by description. The grammar won't do it for you.
*ray'lIj 'oH ghotvetlh'e'. ray'Daq yIbach!*
The grammar of that sentence is doing it just fine. It is clearly indicating, in multiple ways, that the target is not a being capable of speech. It is very jarring for me to see {ghot} as the subject of such a sentence.
It’s also weird to try to reconcile the singular pronoun with the claimed implication that it refers to a plural entity, but inherent plurals are weird in general when one tries to mix them with explicitly plural ideas.
My mistake, I should have written *ray' ghaH ghotvetlh'e'.* The grammar of THAT sentence is doing it just fine, but that's the sentence that's there purely to explain that the target is a being capable of using language. I added it specifically BECAUSE the grammar of that sentence shows the gender. My point is that you can't try to say something like *ray'Daq yIbach* and add grammar like *-pu'* simply to show the gender of the noun. As for using a singular pronoun with an inherently plural noun representing beings capable of using language, we just got confirmation by Okrand that this is the case. Said by De'vID in a message on August 16, "I'm working with Dr. Okrand on a 2nd edition of the paq'batlh and can confirm that the correct pronoun for {negh} is {ghaH}. (Incorrect uses of {chaH} and verb prefixes which incorrectly treated {negh} as grammatically plural will be corrected in the 2nd ed.)" I don't remember whether we have evidence that the pronoun of a "to be" sentence is based on the first noun or the topic noun, but I believe it needs to be the first noun, not the topic noun. We're talking about those people. *ray' ghaH*/they're the targets./ Who are the targets? *ghotvetlh'e'. *On the other hand, in a sentence like *pa'DajDaq ghaHtaH la''e',* the pronoun is based on the topic noun, although "to be" sentences with locatives seem to work a little differently than others. So if it has to be *ray'lI' chaH ghotvetlh'e',* that's fine; it doesn't change the point of my post. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name