tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 23 06:43:30 1995
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Re: KLBC: Question about -bogh
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Question about -bogh
- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 9:43:27 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "ADM::RSORENSEN"@tiny.computing.csbsju.edu" at Feb 22, 95 1:53 pm
In addition to ~mark's excellent comments about this post, I
offer:
According to ADM::RSORENSEN"@tiny.computing.csbsju.edu:
>
> Started getting down & dirty with relative clauses today. This question
> involves suffixes for the head noun. Case in point:
>
> This chocolate is for the officer whom he hit.
> ? yaSvaD qIppu'bogh 'oH yuchvam'e'
Ignore the relative clause altogether:
* yaSvaD 'oH yuchvam'e'.
This is not a valid sentence. You are going from the English,
"This chocolate is for the officer," and you are not
considering the limits of the <noun pronoun noun'e'>
construction. This sentence steps beyond those limits and
sounds like, "For the officer, THIS CHOCOLATE is." Great. This
chocolate is WHAT? We don't know. The chocolate is being for
the officer? Klingon has a very different perspective on the
concept of "being".
yaS qIppu' ghaH. yaSvetlhvaD yuchvam vInob.
In the description of the sentence as object construction,
Okrand plainly states that often things that are said in one
sentence in English are instead said in more than one sentence
in Klingon. I think this works well in many instances beyond
the sentence as object construction alone.
To a Klingon, there has to be an action for there to be a
benefit and {-vaD} implies such a benefit. You can GIVE the
chocolate for the officer's benefit. You can OFFER the
chocolate for the officer's benefit. The chocolate itself is
not really capable of passively BEING for the officer's benefit.
> or should -vaD go after bogh? I ask this because of the statement in TKD
> (pg. 64 para. 2): "The whole construction...is used...as a noun".
Except for the use of Type 5 noun suffixes applied to verbs
that are used adjectivally, or any noun suffix following a verb
with the {-wI'} or {-ghach} suffixes, we have no justification
for applying noun suffixes to verbs.
> Basically, which way should I be thinking:
> This is for (the officer whom he hit) >> -vaD follows rel. clause
> or
> This is for (the officer) whom he hit >> -vaD follows head noun
My problem is with "This is for". You are already in need of
recasting. What do you mean by, "This is for"? You need to find
a better way of expressing this thought.
> 'ej vaj tlhetlh
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roger Sorensen "...and so it goes."
> St. John's University Computing Services -- Linda Ellerbee
> Collegeville MN 56321-2000
>
> [email protected] v:612-363-2035 f:612-363-2761
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
charghwI'
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