tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 21 18:21:56 1996

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Re: qep'a' highlights (Hey let us in on it, guys)


On Wed, 14 Aug 1996 09:51:34 -0700 "Mark E. Shoulson" 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >charghwI:
> >I'd prefer a less idiomatic:
> 
> >yabDu'raj tIDubmoH 'e' vImaS.
>~mark:
> Fair enough, but the question I find more interesting is whether or not the
> imperative is right here, or should it be normal indicative
> (i.e. "yabDu'raj tIDubmoH 'e' vImaS" or "yabDu'raj boDubmoH 'e' vImaS"?)

Good point. I think I prefer the indicative {yabDu'raj 
boDubmoH 'e' vImaS} or the simpler imperative {yabDu'raj 
tIDub!} One can infer that the speaker prefers it that way. 
{{:)> 
...
> >> ~'Iv HoH 'e' vISov~  "I don't know whom he killed."
> 
> >And for this, I'd prefer:
> 
> >nuv HoHbogh vISovbe'.
> 
> >I don't know the humanoid whom he killed.
> 
> That works too, I suppose.  But it is not generalizable.

I like translations that are not generalizable. Those are 
the most interesting, and usually the most clear. The more 
generalizable, the more mindless.

> Similarly, for "I don't know if he has arrived," I tend to use NOT -chugh,
> but rather "pawpu''a'?  'e' vISovbe'."

Thinking more about this, I think it also works well as:

{pawpu'chugh vISovbe'.} "If he has arrived, I don't know 
it." I even LIKE it this way. {paw'pu' 'e' vISovbe'} also 
works. "I do not know that he has arrived." This does not 
necessarily imply that he has arrived and I don't know it. 
It simply states that I do not know that he has arrived, 
which is the same thing as not knowing whether he has 
arrived or not. If I thought that he had arrived, but I was 
not sure, I'd say, {pawlaw'pu'). If I suspected that he had 
not arrived, {pawbe'law'pu'}. If there was no sign that he 
had arrived, though perhaps he had, {pawlaw'be'pu'}.

And so forth. 
...
> >If you want to express it as "I don't know the identity of 
> >the person he killed," then the Klingon Way (page 59) gives 
> >us the use of {qab} as symbol of one's identity, so you 
> >could say:
> 
> >nuv qab HoHbogh vISovbe'. 
> 
> >Meanwhile, this is even MORE ambiguous, since it could 
> >obviously mean, "I don't know the bad person whom he 
> >killed." We could tweak things a bit.
> 
> >nuv qabna' HoHbogh vISovbe'.
> 
> This sounds like "I don't know the person's face he killed," as if he
> killed the face, not the person.  This is one of those cases Nick played
> with, where the head-noun of the relative pronoun is the N1 in a N1-N2
> construction.  Apparently this is quite rare among languages.  I'd think it
> would have to be
> 
> nuv HoHbogh qabna' vISovbe'.

I've seen this problem in Klingon before and it is a nasty 
one easily fixed if Okrand would revoke the rule against 
putting {-'e'} on the first noun of a noun-noun 
construction. Meanwhile, there is new canon to support your 
suggestion. The Romulan probe which seeks and kills. Of 
course, you might interpret it to mean "I don't know the 
true face which killed the person," or "I don't know the 
person who was killed by the true face," but the absence of 
an {-'e'} to point to the head noun suggests that the head 
noun does not have a competing noun in the relative clause 
to cause it to be ambiguous. The other noun we see has to 
be the other half of the noun-noun construction.

That's when the meaning comes through. It has to be either, 
"I don't know the true face of the person he killed," or "I 
don't know the person whose true face killed 
(someone/something)." The latter is not that good a fit, so 
the first one wins. 

> Which, of course, is ambiguous for "I don't know the person whom the
> definite face killed" or "I don't know the definite face which killed the
> person," but I'm not losing sleep over those possibilities.

Especially without the {-'e'}.
 
> ~mark

charghwI'

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