Re: Positioning for emphasis

In a message dated 9/14/2007 1:48:18 PM Central Daylight Time,
david@trimboli.name writes:


> Steven Boozer wrote:
>
> > As for Philip's example of "As for the child, (it) hit the officer", the
> > only way to grammatically translate this is {yaS qIp puq'e'}.  Although
> the
> > subject can be fronted in English, it can't in Klingon; it can only be
> > tagged with the topic suffix {-'e}:
>
> It's true that we've never seen the subject "fronted," but that doesn't
> make it ungrammatical. The grammar seems quite obvious:
>
>     puq'e' yaS qIp [ghaH]
>     As for the child (topic), (he)(subject) hit (verb) the officer
>     (object).
>
> This follows the general Klingon pattern of HOVS (H = "header"). Two
> other sentences of this pattern might be:
>
>     DaHjaj yaS qIp ghaH
>     He hit the officer today.
>
>     DujDaq yaS qIp ghaH
>     He hit the officer (while he was) on the ship.
>
> > According to our current knowledge of colloquial Klingon, ?{puq'e' yaS
> qIp}
> > would most likely be understood as "S/he hit the CHILD's officer, It was
> > the child's officer whom s/he hit" (i.e. not some other officer).
>
> That interpretation is not grammatical. It violates the rule that says a
> Type 5 noun suffix cannot appear on the first noun in a noun-noun
> construction. The only way you could emphasize {puq} in the noun phrase
> {puq yaS} "child's officer" is with intonation or the like.
>
> (Likewise, my previous sentence {DujDaq yaS qIp ghaH} cannot mean that
> he hit an "on-the-ship-officer.")
>
> SuStel
> Stardate 7703.7
>
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