tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 15 12:36:22 1995
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Re: }} charghwI' writes his first poem
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} charghwI' writes his first poem
- Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 12:36:22 -0400 (EDT)
According to Marc Ruehlaender:
>
...
> the way I think it SHOULD work would be
> no'wI' DaHoHta'bogh qa'pu'
> but that is obviously not an allowed phrase
>
> Marc 'Dochlangan'
I'm not so sure. I actually considered this myself and can
understand it on sight, though variations on this theme could
become rather confusing. At this point, I think that we have a
need and some alternatives that Okrand ought to look at and
decide.
It could be that my suggestion of using the topicalizer to
point to the head noun (as is already deemed acceptable) can be
expanded to violate the rule that the topicalizer can't be
applied to the first noun in a noun-noun construction. I prefer
this myself because it handles a wider range of instances where
your suggestion would fail to indicate which noun of the
noun-noun phrase is the head noun of the relative clause.
Furthermore, I think that rule about the topicalizer being
applied to the first noun was written BEFORE it was decided to
use the topicalizer to indicate head nouns at all, so it is
time to modify that rule.
Still, your suggested word order could work in many instances,
as it would here and is worthy of consideration.
Then there's the third option of saying, as ~mark suggests,
"You just can't say that in Klingon."
charghwI'
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