[Tlhingan-hol] mutually subordinate clauses?

[Robyn Stewart]

At 08:35 '?????' 6/3/2012, De'vID jonpIn wrote:
>I suspect that most people would understand the following sentence,
>but is it grammatically aberrant?
>
>{mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo'}

I read it as "If we do not arrive, on account of being attacked ..." 
and await the reset of the sentence. I recommend that when you ask 
questions like that that you separate what you think the sentence 
means with more space, to avoid having people's interpretations 
coloured by your expectations.

>"If we do not arrive, it is because we
>have been attacked."


For that you need perhaps {mapawbe'chugh, wIHIvlu'pu'mo' qaS} or 
{mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu' 'e' yIpIH} or {mapawbe'chugh, 
wIHIvlu'pu'mo' mapawbe'.}

>Does it need to be recast as something like one of the following?
>{mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo' mapawbe'}
>{mapawbe'chugh vaj wIHIvlu'pu'}

The latter doesn't make the cause and effect clear.

>(I didn't invent the original sentence, I read a sentence like it
>somewhere and understood it, but its grammar bothered me a bit so I
>replaced the words to form a grammatically equivalent sentence, for
>the purposes of discussing it.)

I hope it wasn't in nuq bop bom.

- Qov