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Couldn't this also mean "They admire the men and the women."? I wrote that and it was marked wrong. 2017-07-16.
1946
No, because in that case both "men" and "women" would be in the accusative. Both would be the direct object of "admire".
But couldn't it be "The men and women admire"? I know that sentence doesn't make much sense, but with other verbs it would be ambiguous.
- 1946
No, because in your sentence the men and women are the subject. They are doing the admiring, they are not being admired.
What do you mean? From all I know, it's a grammatically correct translation.
- 1946
No, because the subject is in the nominative case and the direct object is in the accusative case. There is a form for X-and, but it's not used here.
"Vali ābrī majaqis" can only mean "The men admire the women".
- 1946
how do I know the and-form is not used here?
If nothing else, "admire" is a transitive verb and needs a direct object.
Here is the declension chart of "vala". "ābra" declines the same way.
The plural nominative of "vala/ābra" is "vali/ābri". The plural accusative is "valī/ābrī". The plural comitative is "valommi/ābrommi".
But how do I know the and-form is not used here? That's the whole point of my question.
I wrote "the men and the women are admiring each other" because I had no basis for knowing which answer to give.
