tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 15 22:28:47 1995
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: KLBC: Another load of tribble....
On Wed, 15 Feb 1995, William H. Martin wrote:
> According to toDbaj, AberdeenDaq tlhIngan:
> > pIj yIH nay'mey DaSamlaHbe' Qe'meyDaq Suchbogh
> > tera'nganpu'.
>
> I want to look at this sentence again, since last time I left
> off the last word. Considering that, we still have problems.
> You are trying to say, "In restaurants where humans visit,
> you often cannot locate tribble dishes." First, I'd recommend
> the verb {tu'} instead of {Sam}, since the former relates more
> directly to successfully finding something ("discover, find,
> observe, notice") while the latter relates more to the process
> of searching ("locate, seek and find"). I tend to think of
> {Sam} as the union of {tu'} and {nej}, and while you can
> certainly {nej} for tribbles, you cannot {tu'} them in these
> restaurants, so the use of {tu'} seems to better focus on the
> part of {Sam} that you cannot do.
>
> Meanwhile this whole phrase {Qe'meyDaq Suchbogh tera'nganpu'}
> doesn't work. I've never seen any example of a relative clause
> that had a head noun that was not the subject or object of the
> verb with {-bogh}. You are trying to assign a locative as the
> head noun of a relative clause. I can find no grammatical
> justification for it. If it WERE justifiable (and I don't think
> it is), then it would have to go where the head noun belongs in
> the main sentence -- at the beginning -- because it is acting
> as the locative for the main verb. Then, we would have problems
> disambiguating the head noun, since we can't mark it with
> {-'e'} because it already has the Type 5 suffix {-Daq}.
When I was a beginner, the first sentence I ever wrote in Klingon
contained a locative suffix on the head noun of a relative clause.
The BG at the time said you couldn't do that, but Captain Krankor, the List
Grammarian, came to my defense and said it was okay.
This is what HoD Qanqor said:
A {-bogh} phrase is a noun phrase, but the whole phrase is acting as the
locative for the whole sentence.
If you can say: yeqQo'bogh yuQvetlh = the planet that refuses to cooperate.
Then you can certainly say:
yeqQo'bogh yuQvetlhvo' ghoS Duy''a'qoq chu'.
"The new 'ambassador' <spit> comes from a planet that won't
cooperate."
Some more examples:
yaS qIppu'bogh HoDvaD tajvam yInob.
"Give this knife to the captain who hit the officer."
yaSvaD qIppu'bogh HoD tajvam yInob.
"Give this knife to the officer whom the captain hit."
juHDaq chenmoHpu'bogh Jack jIyIn.
"I live in the house which Jack built."
---
Also, I found one canon example of a locative on the head noun
of a relative clause on DS9 trading card #99:
loS...qIb HeHDaq, 'u' SepmeyDaq Sovbe'lu'bogh lenglu'meH He ghoSlu'bogh
retlhDaq 'oHtaH.
"It waits...on the edge of the galaxy, it remains next to a route which
they come to in order to travel to unknown regions of the universe."
In this rather complicated sentence, the relative clause, {'u' SepmeyDaq
Sovbe'lu'bogh}, acts as the locative for the verb of the purpose clause
{lenglu'meH}. Also, although the {-Daq} isn't attached to the head noun
of {He ghoSlu'bogh retlhDaq}, it is an interesting example of a locative
noun-noun/relative clause.
Back to toDbaj's sentence, the main correction I would make is to put the
locative at the beginning of the sentence. Using charghwI''s
suggestion to replace {Sam} with {tu'}, I would say:
Qe'meyDaq Suchbogh tera'nganpu', pIj yIH nay'mey Datu'laHbe'.
yoDtargh
> It's just one of those grammatical knots that makes me want to
> scream, "Recast! recast! There has GOT to be a more graceful
> way to express this."
>
> tera'ngan Qe'meyDaq pIj yIHmey nay' tu'be'lu'.
>
> > yIHmey Surghbe' machqu'mo' 'ej taj DaruQ nuqDaq 'e' DaSovbe'.
>
> The first four words are a real mess. One way or the other, the
> word order is wrong and trying to figure out WHICH way they are
> wrong is irritating. Until I hit {'ej} I see, "Because of the
> small, unskinned tribbles...", but there is no verb here and
> you have a conjunction that tells us that we have already seen
> a main verb.
>
> I'm presuming that the {-mo'} as a Type 5 noun suffix applied
> indirectly to {yIHmey} according to TKD 4.4. If you instead
> intend for {-mo'} to be the Type 9 verb suffix, then the word
> order is wrong because {mach} is intransitive. Every time I try
> to come up with a correction, I run into problems because your
> meaning is so unclear. Looking after {'ej}, I begin to wince.
>
> WORD ORDER! WORD ORDER! WORD ORDER! IF YOU CAN'T DO A BETTER
> JOB WITH YOUR WORD ORDER THAN THIS, PLEASE STICK TO SIMPLER
> SENTENCES. ASKING ME TO UNTANGLE THIS KIND OF SPAGHETTI WILL
> ONLY MAKE ME ANGRY. OKAY?
>
> Repeat after me:
>
> Locatives always come before verbs. {nuqDaq} is a locative.
> Anything followed by {-Daq} always comes before the verb to
> which it applies. If that verb has an object, it comes before
> that object. Do not try to apply a locative to a noun. That
> happens in English, but it does not happen in Klingon, where it
> only applies to the action of the verb.
>
> > yIH DaSamchugh yInbogh, chuSqu'. 'ach roqegh 'IwchabvaD nay' 'oH yIH'e'.
>
> Look at the word {yInbogh} and try to explain why it is where
> it is. Where is its head noun? Why is there a verb between it
> and its head noun?
>
> In English, if you use the right "helper" words, you can say
> almost anything with your words in almost any order. In
> Klingon, the word order does a lot of the work that helper
> words do in English. If you write Klingon in the same kind of
> random word order as English, just dropping all the helper
> words, since they don't exist in Klingon, then you write
> garbage that nobody can read.
>
> The first discipline of anyone speaking Klingon must be to
> place the words in the correct order. Again, if you cannot
> handle this in simple sentences, you definitely cannot handle
> it in complex ones.
>
> >From the top, in Klingon, the most important thing is the verb.
> That's why it gets so many affixes and why it can form a
> sentence all by itself. The sentence structure begins with any
> environmental settings for the action of the verb, like
> locatives telling you where the action happens, or time stamps
> telling you when the action happens, or adverbials telling you
> how the action happens. Next comes the object of the action of
> the verb. Next comes the verb itself. Last is the subject.
>
> Relative clauses wrap themselves around the subject or object
> of the verb. For all we know, Klingon only supports restrictive
> relative clauses, since all examples show restrictive ("the
> child who hit the officer" -- and not some other child) and not
> nonrestrictive ("Captain Krankor, who likes racing targ's in his
> spare time" -- there clearly being no confusion about who
> Captain Krankor is which would be clarified by statements about
> racing targs) relative clauses. A restrictive clause restricts
> the head noun setting it apart from other similar nouns while a
> non-restrictive relative clause simply adds a parenthetical
> comment about the head noun without serving to specify this
> noun from a larger set of similar nouns.
>
> Before the incoming mortar fire, I'll point out that I may be
> alone in this opinion about restrictive vs. nonrestrictive
> relative clauses. Okrand does not distinguish between them,
> though so far as I can remember, he has never given an example
> of a nonrestrictive relative clause.
>
> Adjectival verbs are all "stative" and intransitive, which
> means that they cannot follow a noun unless the verb is being
> used as an adjective. Transitive verbs cannot be used as
> adjectives.
>
> Sorry for spouting off so many things relating to grammatical
> rules, but so far you have mangled all of these basic rules. It
> doesn't mean that you are a bad person, but it does mean that
> you need to step back a bit and work on speaking more simply
> until you can handle long sentences without scrambling the word
> order.
>
> I appreciate efforts to write in Klingon and do not wish to
> discourage people, but large submissions with major problems in
> essential word order and grammar bury me. I do not believe that
> you are learning from it. There is simply too much here for me
> to respond to with a high quality of attention and too many
> corrections for you to absorb meaningfully. Please offer either
> simpler grammar or smaller quantities until you get better
> control over your use of the language. At some point, I need to
> protect myself (and any succeeding BGs) from burnout.
>
> > Qapla'
> >
> > -- toDbaj
>
> charghwI'
> --
>
> \___
> o_/ \
> <\__,\
> "> | Get a grip.
> ` |
>