tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 12 22:18:14 1996

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RE: new here

According to Kenneth Traft:
>bID is a noun and according to the rules of noun consturctions it should be
>placed before the modifying noun.

I don't follow you.  What do you mean by a "modifying noun"?  If you consider
"Klingon" to be a modifying noun in "Klingon language", the "modifying noun"
comes first.

>  To say tlhIngan bID implies that bID is a
>verb of aspect.  The same would be true with Hoch.

That's not necessarily true.  The problem is that for a long time we didn't
have any explanation of how to say something like "all of the books", or
"half of a pipius."  It's not quite the same thing as the "possessive" that
the noun-noun construction is supposed to represent, but it's got the same
"Y of the X" form.  So the argument went something like this:  "'All of the
books' should be {paqmey Hoch}, and 'half a pipius' is {pIpyuS bID}."  And
we got apparent confirmation of this construction on a Skybox cards, with
"most of the 23rd century" being {tera' vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wej HochHom}
(Skybox card S15 as reprinted in HolQeD 4:3).

And then The Klingon Way went and said things like {Hoch 'ebmey tIjon} for
"Capture all opportunities."  Now it seems that either {Hoch} acts like a
number or there is some hitherto unknown grammar at work.

>Of course you'd treat bID
>as a now because it is.  1/2 is a number like 1, 2, 3, etc.  It would seem to
>have to follow the same characteristics (TKD section 5.2)

TKD doesn't say {bID} is a number.  {wa'} is a number, but {bID} is just a
noun.  Until we find out why {Hoch} is used in front of nouns, there isn't
a good argument in favor of using {bID} the same way.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

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