tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 04 04:54:44 1998

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Re: Okrand's head noun quote

On Mon, 2 Feb 1998 17:29:23 -0800 (PST) Steven Boozer 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, David Trimboli wrote:
> 
> |Argh!  Can someone please tell me exactly where I may find Okrand's
> |statement about a head noun being only the subject or object of <something>?
> |Is this something he stated in an interview?  Is it just something he
> |mentioned in casual conversation with someone else?  I'd like to be able to
> |reference his exact statement, if at all possible.
> 
> "Interview: Okrand on -bogh and more," in HolQeD 4.2 (June 1995) pp. 5f.

Thanks. It says pretty much what I remembered it as saying, 
which is DIFFERENT from what everyone else has been saying he 
said:

MS: "We know that the head-noun of a relative clause can be the 
subject or the object; the question is, can it be any other 
case?... [Note that ~mark didn't say whether we are talking 
about the subject/object of the relative clause or the 
subject/object of the main clause. Nowhere in the interview is 
this made clear.]

MO: "I couldn't make the {-bogh} thing work for me with anything 
other than subject or object... [Marc also does not tell us 
which clause we are discussing. The head noun functions in both 
the relative clause and the main clause and as such it commonly 
is only used for subject or object. I took this to mean that in 
BOTH contexts, the head noun has to be subject or object, but 
the {meQtaHbogh qachDaq SuvtaH qopu' neH} example violates this.]

MS: "So only the subject or object of a verb [Main or relative? 
Nobody mentions which] can be the head-noun of a relative 
clause [Now, it sounds like we were talking about the main 
verb, since we are speaking of the relative clause as if it is 
separate from that verb]..."

MS: "If you have a noun in one case in the relative clause and 
use it in anohter in the main  clause... I guess you'd have to 
use the two sentence trick."

MO: "Yes"...

Everything in this interview convinced me that head nouns in 
relative clauses can only act as subject or object of both the 
relative clause and the main clause. Seeing the {meQtaHbogh 
qach...} example, this understanding has been broken. Accepting 
that we have to take this, it made most sense to go with the 
Type-5-as-postposition-for-the-whole-relative-clause model since 
it clarified the boundaries of the relative clause beautifully.

If the decision by Okrand is to take this sloppiest of all 
available options, I personally intend to shun the entire 
practice of using relative clauses with any Type 5 suffix at 
all. I don't need it. I don't like choosing wording that can be 
interpreted so many different ways.

I can say that I don't like this interview because in English, 
these two men managed this entire conversation without clearly 
stating what clause they were talking about, and this was 
supposed to be a clarifying discussion about grammar. Come on, 
guys. Is this really the best we can do?

> |Thanks!  (I hate not knowing where to find a piece of Klingon information!)
> 
> That's what I'm here for!

And you do it so well.
 
> - Voragh
>   Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

Why does this remind me of Conan the Librarian? [I wonder if 
anyone else has seen that poster.]

charghwI'

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