[Tlhingan-hol] mutually subordinate clauses?

[Terrence Donnelly]

--- On Sun, 6/3/12, De'vID jonpIn <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I suspect that most people would
> understand the following sentence,
> but is it grammatically aberrant?
> 
> {mapawbe'chugh wIHIvlu'pu'mo'} "If we do not arrive, it is
> because we
> have been attacked."

This seems like two subordinate clauses, and I would not accept it. 

> 
> 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 second option isn't too bad.

> (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.)
> 

These kind of sentences with "It is..." always present problems to newbies. These are cleft expressions, and there is no "it"; it's just an English device to turn a verb phrase into the object of "because". If you want to stick to the spirit of the original, how about

{mapawbe'chugh, wIHIvlu'pu' 'e' 'oS} 

or, sort of pedantic

{wIHIvlu'pu' 'e' 'oS pawbe'taHghachmaj.}

-- ter'eS