[Tlhingan-hol] Pronoun agreement in to-be sentences

[David Trimboli]

On 6/26/2012 8:46 AM, Qov wrote:
>
> A participant in the Vancouver qepHom has produced the sentence:
>
> nuHwIj nIvqu' 'oH mu'mey'e'
>
> to mean "Words are my best weapon."
>
> The fact that mu'mey does not agree with 'oH is bothering me, but I'm
> not sure if it should. Why doesn't the disagreement "plural are
> singular" bother me in English?

Because you're silently adding a plural noun after the adjective 
"plural"? "Plural nouns"?

It also depends on your flavor of English. British English usually uses 
a plural "to be" when the copula references a singular group noun: "the 
group are happy." American English usually uses a singular "to be": "the 
group is happy." There are exceptions to both. I don't know how your 
Canadian English handles it.

The real question is, does the pronoun need to agree with the predicate 
or the subject of the sentence?

> If I have him change it to:
>
> nuHwIj nIvqu' bIH mu'mey'e'
>
> ... then I've changed it to "Words are my best weapons."  If it were my
> own sentence I'd do that, or even make it {mu'mey bIH nuHwIj nIvqu''e'},
> but as it's someone else's sentence I don't want to say "it doesn't feel
> right" or "it has to agree with both" unless there is something backing
> me up. Do we have any canon copula sentences with the two parts
> deserving different pronouns?

I'm not aware of any.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/