Re: Extra-planetary translation project Saul Epstein Sun, 10 May 1998 14:39:51 -0500 Quotes from: MDriest Date: Sunday, May 10, 1998 1:07 PM >Some questions... [...] >en' is therefore alone in the >sentence and is therefore automatically the subject. Sort of. I meant to say something about this earlier, when you asked why in my "quote" I say or "Surak he-saved." I've been treating these pronoun particles, when attached to other words this way, as person- and number-indicating prefixes, like the suffixes in English and other Indo-European languages: sav + e = 1st person singular sav + est = 2nd person singular sav + eth = 3rd person singular and so on. This system is deteriorated in Modern English, of course. The little pieces on the end, attached to the root, make the resulting words mean, "I save, thou savest, she saveth," respectively; but you can't leave the little pieces off just because you happen to be naming the subject in the sentence rather than relying on pronouns. This is still the case in "proper" Modern English, even though we only distinguish 3rd-singular from all the others. I don't know that this is the case in Vulcan at all. But the assumption that it is motivates my translations so far... >I really don't understand why this e[thing] is necessary? That was my response to Rob's notice that without an explicit subject, the sentence could be taken to ask about the bothersomeness of an understood subject, rather than about the existance of some subject which happens to be bothersome. And since I intended the latter, I made the subject explicit. I agree that this is not strictly speaking necessary, but I also think that it results in a less ambiguous sentence. >BTW, why did >an' change to en'? Oh, you ARE paying close attention. I meant originally; was a typo. I'm making use of the five-level deixis to let the speaker be more precise in his question. The thing whose existence he would establish is near but imperceptible to him: otherwise he wouldn't have to ask if it existed. -- from Saul Epstein locus*planetkc,com www,jccc,net/~sepstein "Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at