Re: Subordinate clauses

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Barrow" <davidab@...>


David uarlo krespr:
> >>Given that the best place for a relative clause is next to the
> >>noun/pronoun it
> >>qualifies, my first interpretation of the above would be that you saw
> >>the man.
Sally:
> >Yes, that was my original understanding of the sentence.
David:
> >>The dog that I saw with the man was green
> >>makes clear what I saw, but leaves the 'with the man'  ambiguous.
Sally:
> >It also makes clear that it's the dog, not the man, that you saw
(although
> >both are obviously seen together, but one or the other is focused).
> >
> >By "ambiguous," do you mean that you and the man might have seen the dog
> >together?  I would have written "the dog that I and the man saw was
green."
> >
David:
> Yes, your sentence is clearer but mine is still ambiguous. Compare:
>
> the film that I saw with my girlfriend was boring
Sally mal krespr:

Right: the problem is with the blandness (despite that green dog!) and
ambiguity of the first sentence.  Films don't generally accompany
girlfriends!  Context is all.

David uarlo krespr:
> >>The dog that I saw was with the man was green.
Sally:
> >There is a redundant "was."  Did you mean "the dog that I saw THAT was
with
> >the man was green"?  Because this reveals the structure and difficulty of
> >this sentence which embeds two relative clauses in the long nominative
> >clause, whatever the focus is:
> >
> >        THE DOG THAT WAS WITH THE MAN THAT I SAW was green.
> >        THE DOG THAT I SAW THAT WAS WITH THE MAN was green.
> >
David:
> The 'was' is not redundant
Sally:  my bad; I should have said that a relative "that" was missing
between "saw and was."  As you can see, my second sentence above answers
your explication of the nested phrases below.

David:
> 1 the dog was green
>
> 2 the dog was with the man
> 3 I saw this
>
> 3 + 2 I saw (that the dog was with the man)    object clause that =
> conjunction
>
> Then I embed 3 + 2 in 1
>
> the dog that I saw was with the man was green
Sally: The problem with your sentence is its mega-awkwardness.  It looks
damaged.

David:
> compare:  the money that I thought was missing has been found
This is more syntactically permissible.  "that I thought was missing" more
easily loses the implied relative pronoun than does "that I saw was with,"
especially when there's an extra "was" in the sentence to muck up the works.
Nobody would say that anyway; they'd say "the dog I saw that was with the
man was green."  Or, they'd say: "You know that dog I saw?  the one with the
man?  It was GREEN!"  :)  I guess we need a better sentence.

Sally said yesterday:
> >What did I have for Teonaht?  Li zef kelry hain, vyrm lo kohs, as a way
to
> >remove one of the embedded relatives:  "the man saw I whom, green his
dog."
> >
> How do you know the dog was with the man?
You don't.  As I responded to somebody else's remarks, Teonaht is Teonaht,
and that's just how you say it.  I gave some other tighter translations.
Teonaht's vocabulary for ownership is very complicated and ranges from
something being WITH someone, someone having something voluntarily, or
having it involuntarily or indifferently.  To avoid all that clapcrap, it's
just easier to say "that man I saw [at the park, at the circus, at the
trainstation], his dog was green."  Ergo, the dog was with him.  Just by
putting pomil zef in here I've managed to screw things up: "with the man"
means "he has the dog with him now"  "from the man" would indicate the dog
was with him in the past.  This is used of indifferent possession or
propinquity.  The man and the dog could have been standing together.  The
dog from the man that I saw.

THIS IS STILL IN THE TESTING PHASE... if it proves too ambiguous or
cumbersome, I'll dump it.  If there is any hidden cleverness or efficiency
in it, I will have to find it.  :(

                http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/verbs.html#alien

With some prompting I came up with the sentences you comment on below.

David:
> And if the focus of seeing is the dog, not the man?
Sally:  then you front the dog:  Li kohs pomil/tandil/omil zef kelry hain,
vyrm lo.  "the dog with/from/of the man saw-I, green he. i.e., "the dog that
I saw with the man was green."  See below:

> >It's a lot more difficult for the second sentence:
    [I've forgotten which sentence now this is... I think the ones way
above, in CAPS]

Li kohs kelry hain pomil
> >zef, vyrm elo.  "the dog saw I whom with the man, green past-he."  Both
show
> >the different focuses by putting kelry hain after the noun in question.
David:
> Your pronouns have past forms?
Yessiree!  I posted about this just a few days ago in a thread called "tense
marking on nouns."  Teonaht has tense marking on its pronouns.  Also aspect
and modal marking: elry, preterite-I.  uary, completive-I. talry, "I can."

David:
> And if the focus of seeing is the man with the man as companion?
I've answered this below my following comment

Sal ely krespr:
> >Also possible:  Vyrm li kohs kelry hain pomil zef.  "Green the dog saw I
> >whom with the man."  Vyrm li kohs pomil zef kelry hain.  "Green the dog
with
> >the man saw I whom."
David:
> changing which one you saw and which one was the companion
No, changing the embedding:  Green was the dog that I saw with the man;
green was the dog with the man that I saw.
In neither case am I and the man seeing the dog together.

If by "the man as companion" you mean "I and the man" who see together, then
that would be: vyrm li kohs kelry hain uo le zef: "Green the dog saw-I which
and the man.  The "le" article shows that the man is a volitional subject.
A variant: vyrm li kohs kelsoyts, yryi le zef-jo:  "green the dog we saw, I
and the man."  Slightly more emphasis on our seeing it together.

Actually, the verb "saw" in this sense probably requires the non-volitional
particle.  Ke means to "watch, observe, look at," whereas ke+n means "to see
passively," "to have something come within your line of sight and surprise
you."

Vyrm li kohs kenelry.  "Green the dog that I saw (by accident)."  Or
truncated: vyrm li kohs kelnry.

> Is the verb 'be'
> a) optional in constructions like the above?,
> b) always omitted in constructions like the above?,
Teonaht is nearly zero copula, and is usually omitted in everything.  The
only time you see parem ("to be") and its conjugations is 1) emphatic and 2)
in some subordinate clauses:

    1)  Saly Kevz rynne,  "I AM Sally Caves."  Tah ainna, "it IS a bird."
    2)  Il beto ry ravvo nalo pamuis  "The boy I love is he sick"  (The boy
I love is sick) (na, "is," is needed because main and subordinate clauses
express their relationship through juxtaposition of verbs, one where the
subject/pronoun precedes and the other where the subject/pronoun follows.
This is an old development, and the reason why having two embedded relative
clauses, such as the one posed by this thread, is very difficult in Teonaht.

Of course, all of these things would be better worked out by being used in
the world, something that Tolkien himself lamented.  Teonaht needs
circulation within the world to iron out its difficulties; making it work
for ME is a lifetime of practice.
Some things I hang onto and work around, because they have a history with
me.

> c) what verb 'be'?
Parem:  not yet loaded on my website, alas.  It's a long chapter that I have
in WORD that needs a lot of revision.

Vyko!  Now let's see if after midnight my time counts as a new day, and this
is accepted by the list as posting number 1.
Sally
 http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/verbs.html

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