Wednesday, February 21, 2007

More Thoughts, Obtained Whilst Tossing & Turning

We need a complementizer. At least sometimes. It may need to be defined for each type of complement clause. But clauses of wishing, &c., definitely need it. For example:

ni halu = I want
ni mene = I go
ni halu [ni mene] = I want my goer

Note that this last result is not quite what we want when we nominalize that complement clause. Better would be

ni halu ko mene = I want [the idea/state/quality of] going OR
ni halu ko ni mene = I want [the idea/state/quality of] me going

Is it being too Indo-European to say that the pronoun can be omitted when the subject of the matrix and complement clauses are the same? Thus

ni halu ko mene = I want to go
but
ni halu ko se mene = I want you to go

What other kinds of complement clauses are there? I need to find a list. Reported speech and the like, now, that's an interesting one.

Le Catherine i loha le Heathcliff = Catherine loves Heathcliff
Le Edgar i si sano [le Catherine i loha le Heathcliff]
= Edgar said that Catherine loves Heathcliff

That doesn't strike me as being terribly bad, or anything. The only issue is that, in Koa, all NPs must have a specifier, and the nominalized clause le Catherine i loha le Heathcliff does not. Furthermore, isn't what Edgar said really an idea/state/quality, which is what I keep using ko for? In this case the sentence would need to run

Le Edgar i si sano [ko le Catherine i loha le Heathcliff] = Edgar said that Catherine loves Heathcliff

The jury's still out on this one for me. I need to think some more about it with other verbs -- Edgar believes, Edgar knows, Edgar reports, etc. One last thought: If Le Edgar i na halu [ko le Catherine i loha le Heathcliff] is the only possible translation of "Edgar doesn't want Catherine to love Heathcliff," wouldn't it be weird to have a non-parallel construction without ko for the reporting kind of thing discussed above? Hm.

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