tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 14 11:34:17 1995
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Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 11:34:17 -0400 (EDT)
According to [email protected]:
>
> ghItlh charghwI':
> >...a verb with {-bogh} by necessity HAS to have
> >a subject or object to act as its head noun.
>
> I don't know about that....
>
> bIvalbogh qaHo'.
This is indeed a clever try, but I'm not sure that it is
grammatically valid. There are no canon examples of a relative
clause without an explicit head noun. I suspect that, as
strange as it looks, it would be more justifiable to use a
pronoun than no noun at all:
bIvalbogh SoH qaHo'.
Now, we have a head noun. Still, the sentence is quite strange.
I suspect that stylistically, this is unusual for Klingon,
since most commonly canon examples use exclusive rather than
descriptive relative clauses. By that, I mean that they use a
relative clause to pick out an individual from a group by
specifying the individual through the relative clause. They
don't tend to make parethetical remarks about a noun by use of
the relative clause.
It's kind of like the difference between:
The captain whom my sister likes just walked in.
and
Captain Krankor, whom my sister likes, just walked in.
In the first example, we specify that out of all the captains
in the universe, the one whom my sister likes just walked in.
In the second example, we already know who just walked in. The
relative clause just added a little description as a
parenthetical remark about this person.
> Okay, so there is a subject stated in the prefix.
> (I thought the choice of sentence might
> ease the situation.) {{;-)
>
> gheyIl
Flattery will get you nowhere. [However, bribery can be very
effective...] Anyway, I see your point, and it could be that
you are right, but given the absence of any canon example of a
relative clause without an explicit noun as head noun, I'm not
really prone to use such a construction without an explicit
head noun myself or to encourage anyone else to do so.
charghwI'
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