Re: Small translation challenge

On 6/2/06, Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...> wrote:
> In your conlangs/auxlangs, how would you translate this:
>
> "The boy whose mother my daughter was later to befriend became ill."
In Klingon - I wouldn't. As far as I know, you can only relativise
subjects or objects there.

As for natlangs: Greek allows you to embed an explicit pronoun
referring to the head, which lets you construct more complex
sentences. So while I think this couldn't be done with the genitive of
the "real" relative pronoun (since the result is object, not subject,
of "befriend"), you could probably do it with the "easy" all-purpose
relative pronoun που, giving something like Το αγόρι που η κόρη μου
ύστερα έγινε φίλος της μητέρας του, έγινε
άρρωστος. Which does
something like "The boy REL the daughter mine later became friend
of-the mother his [<-- this explicit pronoun referring back to the
boy] became ill".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Replies