Re: Subordinate clauses

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Knibb" <j_knibb@...>


> Sally wrote:
> >In Teonaht you'd
> >probably say: "the man that I saw his dog was green."  Not too much
> >nesting:
> >Li zef kelry hai, vyrm lo kohs.  "the man see-past I (rel.)him, green his
> >dog."  This strikes me as being a very common natlang solution.
>
> I agree, absolutely.  There are (at least) two ways to approach a
> translation
> exercise -- you can approximate the grammar of the sentence as closely as
> possible, or you can try to come up with what a putative native speaker
> would
> have said with the same communicative intention.  The problem with the
> latter approach is that it often subverts the point of the exercise!  In
> this case,
> Teonaht's use of two clauses strikes me as very natural.
Right, thanks; it must be a law in Teonaht that you can't have two relative
clauses nested in the main noun clause.

> Just one question -- is this two sentences connected by a comma, or is the
> first clause syntactically relative?
Li zef kelry hain, vyrm lo kohs?  The first clause is syntactically relative
because there is no verb for zef, "man"-- it is only "the man THAT I SAW."
Vyrm lo kohs is the main clause.  You should see my response to David
Barrow's post, where I give alternative wordings.  I guess I supply the
comma for clarity in reading.  Teonaht itself is skimpy on its commas,
especially when using the Renuon:

    http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/scrippic.html

 Would a reverse translation be 'I saw
> the man,
> green his dog.' or 'The man I saw, green his dog.'?
"I saw the man, green his dog" would mean in Teonaht, as it does in Welsh
and I think Hebrew, "I saw the man whose dog was green":  Il zef elry ke,
vyrm lo kohs.  Note that "man" is now in the object case, and the first
phrase is indeed a full sentence instead of a relative.

("The man I saw" is just the ordinary word order of main clause Teonaht:
OSV)

Firrimby!
Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://somewhereIshouldputupasyntaxpage

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