tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 24 09:04:01 1998
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Re: your mail
According to Marc Paige:
...
> BTW, I have posted a question about <chenmoH> to the news group for Dr. =
> Okrand. I know that this word has been discussed before, but I would =
> still like to see if he has any comments. I don't recall his input on =
> the issue. I had gotten this wrong on the postal course also.
Basically, Okrand's approach to this has been to say that all
the words listed in the dicationary that appear to be roots
with suffixes really are roots with suffixes, except in those
rare cases where considering them to be one larger root offers
a new grammatical function. {lo'laH} is such a case because if
you consider it to be a root verb (instead of the root {lo'}
plus the suffix {-laH}), you can then use it following a noun,
acting adjectivally. {pegh lo'laH vISov.} I could not say that
if {lo'laH} was not a root verb unto itselve because Type 5
verb suffixes are not allowed on adjectival verbs.
I don't really remember any words except {lo'laH} that he said
were considered to be used as whole words unto themselves. All
the others, like {chenmoH} are to be treated as roots plus
suffixes. They are listed separately for one of three reasons:
1. Like {chenmoH} and {ghojmoH}, the English entry was
necessary in order to give people a way to look up "make" and
"teach" which would have been absent if he only listed {chen}
and {ghoj}.
2. Like {parHa'} and {Qochbe'} and {tlhorghHa'} the listings
tell you the normal suffix for the meaning which you might
otherwise guess wrong.
3. The root-suffix yields a meaning you might otherwise not
guess. I know I've seen such words, but I can't bring any
examples to mind immediately. Hmmm. {ja'chuq}. I know there are
better ones.
> >>>
> > not jabbI'ID ngeHbogh nuv DaSovlaH.
>
> It is slightly better form to disambiguate the head noun of
> your relative clause with {-'e'}. Is it the message or the
> person you can never know? As stated, it could be either.
> <<<
> This still confuses me. Which noun gets the <'e'>? I tried to follow the =
> discussions before, but got lost in the length of the replies.
The head noun gets it. If you mean "You can never know the
person who sends the message," you put {-'e'} on {nuv}. If you
mean, "You can never know the message which is sent by the
person," you put the {-'e'} on {jabbI'ID}.
The head noun is the one that functions in both the relative
clause "person sends message" and the main clause "You can
never know the person" (assuming that "person" is the head noun
here).
> Meanwhile, in terms of content, vaj not vay' vISovlaHchu'mo' not
> jItIchlaH 'ej not vISovlu'chu'mo' not mutIchlaH vay'.
> ...
>
> But if no one knows me, does that mean I should not be insulted?
> ghobe'. <-chu'> means so much more than I wanted the english to say. (I =
> really like the precision of Klingon!) Of course, I wanted to convey =
> that you should know with whom you're communicating with before you =
> start <mu'qaD veS>. Some people don't know how to handle this and if =
> they get into the situation accidentally... well that's how wars start =
> {{{;-). How would you convey this meaning?=20
Just leave off the {-chu'}.
> ---------------
> SI'IluD
> wa'Hu' jhIboghbe'
charghwI'