tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 26 20:39:02 1998

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Re: Locatives and {-bogh} (was Re: KLBC Poetry)

On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 02:44:11 -0800 (PST) Qov <[email protected]> 
wrote:

> At 15:46 98-01-23 -0800, you wrote:
> }ghItlh ter'eS:
> }
> }>But I'd forgotten the {meQtaHbogh...} example. It looks to me like
> }>this sentence is trying to use a noun in two different modes at once:
> }>{meQtaHbogh (qach/qachDaq) Suv}, where the noun is the subject of the
> }>inner verb but locative in relation to the outer verb. How is this
> }possible?
> }
> }First - how it is possible? MO says so. Why it is possible is the
> }question...
> }
> }Apparently, adding <-Daq> to a head noun (1) marks it just like <-'e'> does
> }(2) makes the noun phrase represented by the <-bogh> expression into a
> }locative. I have long suspected it would be logical to mark head nouns with
> }"any" Type 5. (Without any proof whatsoever. What else is new?)
> 
> Krankor thinks so too.  I think he did a FGD on it.
> 
> Qov     [email protected]
> Beginners' Grammarian                 

So, why don't I like this idea? Well, let's consider the kind of 
mess this idea can lead us to:

quSDaq Sopbogh HoD vIlegh.

By my expectations, it means, "I saw the captain who ate in the 
chair." (Note the statement is equally ambiguous in English as 
Klingon. Did I see "the captain who ate" in the chair, or did I 
see the captain "who ate in the chair"? We could use a comma if 
the first meaning is intended, I suppose, but in most cases, the 
two meanings both tell us you saw the captain in the chair and 
he was eating.)

By your advice, it would have to mean, "I saw it in the chair 
which the captain ate." wejpuH. But there it is, {quSDaq} 
obviously has a Type 5 suffix, so it must be the head noun of 
the relative clause, right?

Meanwhile, note that the example you point to is not using 
{-Daq} as {-'e'}, since {meQtaHbogh qachDaq} doesn't have an 
object, so there is no need of a {-'e'} to tell us which noun is 
the head noun. There is only one noun there which could be the 
head noun. If {-Daq} was not there, there would be no reason to 
put {-'e'} there, so it is a really bad example if that is what 
it is supposed to be showing us.

In fact, I think it is just a really bad example no matter how 
you look at it. I prefer to ignore it entirely. It was a clever 
thing to say and would not have been easy to say any other way, 
but it just looks really bad. What was the whole 
example? {meQtaHbogh tachDaq SuvtaH qoHpu' neH,} I think.

I'm one of the controversial few who likes {mej} as a transitive 
verb, antonym to {'el}, and would write this:

SuvtaHmeH meQtaHbogh tach lumejQo' qoHpu' neH.

jIQapqa''a'?

charghwI'

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