tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 16 13:38:19 1995
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Re: }} charghwI' writes his first poem
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: }} charghwI' writes his first poem
- Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 13:38:19 -0400
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>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.
I think Marc's method works better than expanding the "'e'" rule.
Expanding the use of "'e'" constitutes enabling the "-bogh" construction to
have as its head-noun a possessor. We know that "-bogh" can only have
subjects and objects as its head, and even if you want to say that Okrand
hadn't considered possessors, isn't it odd that a possessor can be, but not
an indirect object (-vaD) or location (-Daq) or source (-vo') or cause
(-mo')? Surely at least some of these should be okay. And Nick points out
that on the hierarchy of languages with relatives, having a possessor as a
head is one of the *last* things you can have.
Now, Marc's method of taking the "-bogh" phrase as a noun clause does not
violate that rule or hierarchy at all. It does not let "-bogh" handle
possessors as heads, rather it simply lets N-N handle "-bogh" clauses as
its elements, which is a different story altogether (I don't even know of
any evidence that it should not be permitted, aside from lack of examples,
and they may exist too). The "-bogh" phrase still uses a subject or object
as its head, no problem. An interesting way to finesse the hierarchy... :)
>Then there's the third option of saying, as ~mark suggests,
>"You just can't say that in Klingon."
Maybe...
~mark