tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 02 03:37:25 1995

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conjunctions of more than two things



The only examples I find of conjunctions' usage involve exactly
two nouns or sentences.  I donUt see any clues about what to do
with three or more nouns.  I can guess, of course, but the result
isn't necessarily going to be understood.  Here are two ways I
can think of to do it:

  "this, that, and the other" -> {Dochvam Dochvetlh latlh je}
There's no particular reason this would be understood at all!
The "noun-noun" pairs can be read as "noun's noun" far too easily.
It gets even worse with more than three items.

  "this-and-that and the other" -> {Dochvam Dochvetlh je latlh je}
At least this has a chance of getting the meaning across.  I base
it on my interpretation of "noun noun conjunction" as a particularly
complex noun, but I don't claim to be interpreting it correctly.
There are two ways I see to extend this construction to four or
more items.  {Dochvam Dochvetlh je Dochvetlh je latlh je} as sort
of a "nested" scheme, or {Dochvam Dochvetlh je Dochvetlh latlh je je}
as sort of "heirarchically" constructed.  This last one looks very
bad as a general combination, but might be useful if I really wanted
to combine other combinations like {DeS 'uS je mIn Ho' je ghap}.

Is there an official way to do this?

-- ghunchu'wI'



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