tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 14 11:50:16 1995
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Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} -mo' and N1's N2
- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 11:50:16 -0400
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>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'.
I think I have to agree. BOTH look pretty weird to me, actually, but the
pronoun certainly helps understand the weirdness. It's almost certainly
the kind of sentence you'd blink at before understanding. Yes, I know it's
a sensible construction... it just "sounds" funny.
As to restrictive vs. nonrestrictive in Klingon relative clauses, I
personally tend to doubt that Okrand meant -bogh to be only one and not the
other, or he'd have told us. But if as you say we only have canon of
one... well, it's something to think about.
~mark