tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 01 19:58:35 1998
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Re: Locatives and {-bogh} (was Re: KLBC Poetry)
>Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:06:01 -0800 (PST)
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>According to Mark E. Shoulson:
>>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>
>That's the only way I've ever understood it. Meanwhile, we had
>no grammatical justification for this unless we extend the rule
>that Type 5 suffixes can be applied to adjectival verbs
>following the noun the suffix would otherwise be applied to. If
>we think of this as meaning that the Type 5 suffix is applied
>to the entire noun phrase, then we might consider a relative
>clause to be a noun phrase and put the Type 5 suffix after the
>entire phrase.
That is how I think of it, yes. And although I did make the logical
extension of that theory, it is very definitely a speculation, and just
because it's logical doesn't mean it's right.
>Meanwhile, we don't have examples to show if we could, for
>example say:
>
>?Duj vIlIghboghDaq jISop.
Yeah, this is a strange result, finding -Daq on the -bogh'ed verb
directly. Or would be, if this is, in fact, correct.
>> but does not comprise any contradiction to
>> what we know.
>
>There is no other place in Klingon grammar where a word is used
>by two different clauses, one with a suffix and the other
>without. This DOES contradict all grammar we already know, but
>it is canon, so apparently there is some grammar we DON'T know.
That's a difficult position to put yourself in: every time you learn
something new, it contradicts what you know? We have no examples of this
before, so it's new. It doesn't *contradict*, it teaches us something
new.
>> It says that the head-noun of a -bogh clause--its subject or
>> object only, mind you--can fill other roles in the matrix, that's all.
>
>That's not quite all. It's the METHOD that is missing. We have
>one example that shows us what to do if the locative for the
>main clause is also the subject and head noun of a relative
>clause. It shows us nothing about how to handle the head noun
>if it is the object of the relative clause, or for that matter
>how to handle this if an object exists, head or not.
I hadn't gotten to the method yet. But yes, you are right. It gives us an
example with a subject, doesn't tell us about the object. There are several
different possible speculations one could make about how this would work on
the object, and I was exploring what they might be and what they might
mean. There is also the very distinct possibility that none of the above
are right, and there is either no way at all to do this with subjects
(which is an interesting and useful result in itself) or it is done in
another way entirely. Indeed, looking at the "logical" possibilities can
help us consider whether or not this can be done at all (as it did: we
looked at what I at least think would be the most logical way of doing it,
and you quite reasonably hated it, so maybe it can't be done at all).
>Given the population you are addressing here, it might be
>appropriate to define "postposition". I suspect most readers
>here have never heard the word.
It's basically the same as "preposition" except it comes after its object
rather than before it.
That might not be much help. "Adpositions" (to talk of both at once)
indicate a relationship between a noun (their object) and other parts of
the sentence (another noun phrase sometimes, or the sentence as a whole).
So "I ate in the ship" has the preposition "in" to link "the ship" with the
rest of the sentence, indicating that the action took place with the ship
as its locus. In English such words generally precede the word they govern
(prepositions are words like to, in, at, on, from, over, beside, for, etc.)
In some languages, they follow their objects, and are called
postpositions. It could be argued that in English "ago" is a postposition,
but apparently there's some debate about that. Also iffily, there's the
clitic "'s", which represents possession. More on that later.
Klingon -Daq, while defined as a suffix, functions as a postposition: it
follows a noun-phrase and indicates its relationship to the rest of the
sentence. Note that I said "noun-phrase" and not "noun." That's why
noun-suffix is not the most accurate term. "-Daq" (and -vo', -vaD, etc)
migrates to the end of a noun-phrase, even if it winds up no longer on the
actual noun it's supposed to modify: it follows the whole phrase that
represents the noun. So "veng tInDaq HoD vIlegh" has the -Daq on the
adjectival verb modifying the noun, because it's at the end.
>Good analysis. Klingon grammar offers no way to disambiguate
>between these, since in Klingon grammar, in order to understand
>the use of a word, it's, as a real estate agent would put it,
>"location, location, location". You can't put a locative
>between a verb and its object, so this locative has to go in
>the same place, regardless of which clause it is modifying. The
>only way to disambiguate is to break this into two sentences.
Right, more likely you wouldn't bother unless there was a real possibility
that you would be misunderstood. If context sufficed (as it often does),
you'd just say {qachDaq Qaw'bigh nawlogh SoplI' HoD}.
>> (2)
>>
>> /-------------\
>> meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoHpu' neH
>> \----------------/
>>
>> This one IS intriguing. But put this way we see it has a certain amount of
>> logic to it. The relative clause is parsed, and passed as the first
>> element of the main clause. Neither clause is broken or discontinuous,
>> all's quite clean and sensible. The only weird thing is that the
>> clause-break actually occurs mid-word, between qach and -Daq. However, if
>> you think of -Daq as a postposition, that's not really so serious. It's
>> strange, and it taught us something new about Klingon, but frankly it's
>> something I don't mind learning, and now that I've thought it through, it
>> works.
>
>I've always seen (and winced at) it this way.
For me, having spelled it out more clearly and plugged it into the -Daq as
postposition idea, it's a lot less wince-making.
>> Now let's look at the latest:
>>
>> (1c)
>>
>> /--\ /--------------\
>> qachDaq Qaw'bogh nawlogh SoplI' HoD
>> \-/ \--------/
>>
>> (This is the meaning "the captain was eating in the restaurant which the
>> squadron destroyed")
>>
>> Now do you see why this is ugly?
>
>Thank you. Now my mind understands why the veins protruded from
>my neck the first time I saw this.
>
>> The clauses are horrendously
>> discontinuous:
Indeed. While I still think this analysis is right and that this explains
why this is so icky, I should give some examples of cases where this exact
sort of breaking happens in other languages (English), for completeness'
sake. Although it happens, I still maintain that they shouldn't be relied
upon. The structure exists in English, but it's generally selected
against, not used heavily or in general cases (it complicates parsing
badly), and is mostly on the way out. It occurs in more formal speech, old
Bible translations and all, but apparently normal speakers don't like it
much. Things like:
Everyone should come to class who wishes to understand the topic.
That nation is blessed which acknowledges me as Head Cool Dude.
A data structure is a way of storing data which exhibits certain behaviors.
(this from one of my classes; I realized it was ambiguous and had to put
parens around "data" to make it clear).
>> Actually, if I wanted to say "the captain was eating in the restaurant
>> which the squadron destroyed," I think at this point what I'd like to see
>> is this:
>>
>> /-------------------\
>> ?qach Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD
>> \------------/
>
>Yuckola. I don't like this a bit. Even if Type 5 noun suffixes
>can be applied to entire noun phrases and a relative clause is
>considered to be a noun phrase, the association between the
>Type 5 suffix and the word to which it is attached is quite
>strong. Unless there is some other flag to tell us that {-Daq}
>is attached to the relative clause whose head noun is somewhere
>else, it is only natural to read this as: "The captain was
>eating at the squadron who destroyed the building."
Yeah. The problem with this is that the -Daq has a very strong affinity to
apply, in people's minds, to the noun it is attached to. The "spooky
action at a distance" of making the -Daq govern a noun clean on the other
side of a relative clause is probably hard to swallow. It's less harsh
with adjectival verbs, since (a) they're shorter than relative clauses, so
it doesn't move that far, and (b) they're verbs, and are thus more
obviously holding it for somebody else.
>If we have to accept this, I suggest an ammendment to this
>grammar:
>
>?qach'e' Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD.
Interesting that you and HomDoq (was it?) thought of this selfsame
recommendation independently.
>> This is definitely speculative and controversial, and I wouldn't use it
>> without Okrand's say-so, but frankly it makes sense to me, despite its
>> seeming illogic. It relies rather heavily on the view of -Daq as a
>> postposition, a view which is unproven, though supported by the grammar we
>> know so far.
>
>So, like the modification?
Probably a lot more than you do. I'm not so convinced the proposal is
right as you are that it's wrong, but I'm still not sure it's wrong either.
Maybe it is a markedly formal/archaic usage (not so archaic as no' Hol, but
a little old-fashioned), in literary settings where you have time to wade
through convoluted sentences.
Meanwhile, some examples of a very similar happening in everyone's favorite
example language, English. This one has just the opposite distribution of
the other examples: it is NOT considered formal or even technically
correct, but it's still in the mouths of English-speakers every day.
Apparently people are having an easier time with this, as it is entering
the language, rather than leaving it at the moment.
The "postposition" at hand is "'s", a clitic that represents possession in
English (a clitic is a thingy that's sort of partway between word and
word-part). By rights, it's supposed to be attached to the word it
modifies, the noun that does the possessing. But you hear things like
this:
That is the couple next door's pet.
Less commonly:
I saw the man who hit you's car.
That last one is harder to swallow, probably for the reason charghwI'
doesnt't like the Klingon construction we're discussing. The "'s" looks to
bind to the word it's on, which seems compatible. Maybe it's because it's
"you"; what about
I painted the man who killed Frank's car.
Oh, yes, that really doesn't work. The binding is too tight, just as
charghwI' feared.
~mark