[Tlhingan-hol] To-Be-Constructions

[Philip Newton]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 20:25, Lieven Litaer <lieven.litaer at web.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> without giving my own opinion, I ask all of you:
>
> Do you see any difference between
> {A 'oH B-'e'} and {B 'oH A-'e'} ?

Yes - a difference in topicness. Pretty much what SuStel said.

> Going one step further, how do you say "My name is X",

{X 'oH pongwIj'e'}

> and why do you not
> use the opposite word order of what was your first choice?

Because typically I want to answer the question "What is your name?"
and not "What is 'Philip Newton'?"

So I answer, effectively: "My name? It's 'Philip Newton'" rather than
"'Philip Newton'? That's my name."

If someone *did*, for some strange reason, ask {nuq 'oH «Philip
Newton»'e'?}, I would then probably answer, {pongwIj 'oH «Philip
Newton»'e'}.

In general, copulas aren't symmetric, I think, since it's fairly rare
that they're used to signifiy identity - more often, I think, they
signify something else, such as membership in a set ("Lions are
animals" is not the same as "Animals are lions") or quality ("Snow is
white" -- "White is snow" is unusual, and would probably be understood
as a poetic rearrangement of word order rather than having "White" as
the "subject"(?) of the copula).

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>