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