tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 29 13:56:52 1998

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

According to Mark E. Shoulson:
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> >Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 18:47:18 -0800 (PST)
> >From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
> >
> >Qermaq has argued that in a {-bogh} clause, any noun with a type 5
> >suffix is the head noun, and charghwI' has argued (passionately: reH
> >nong charghwI') that the only type 5 suffix that makes any sense is
> >-'e'. I mostly agree with charghwI' on this one.
> 
> I don't think there's much room to argue with charghwI' on this point.

jImon.

> Okrand himself said that he couldn't see the head-noun of a relative clause
> being anything other than the subject or the object, and thus if the head
> is flagged at all, it would be with -'e'.
> 
> The {meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoHpu' neH} example is not a counterexample to
> this:  the -bogh clause is {meQtaHbogh qach}, and the head noun is the
> *subject* of that clause.  The reason it has the -Daq on it is because it
> functions as a locative in the *matrix* clause (the surrounding sentence).

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.

Meanwhile, we don't have examples to show if we could, for
example say:

?Duj vIlIghboghDaq jISop.

"I ate in the ship which I rode."

> This is admittedly weird,...

No argument there.

 to have this noun wearing two hats (a subject in
> one sentence and a locative in another--though we don't bat an eye at the
> subject of a relative clause being the object of a matrix clause.  Probably
> because subjects and objects are both unmarked in Klingon, while everything
> else is marked with suffixes), 

Exactly.

> 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.
Likely, it relates to grammar we do know, but I'd hardly say it
doesn't contradict what we know. It clearly does. There is no
current justification in the explained grammar for this example.

> 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.

> In
> fact, it further strengthens the case that strictly speaking, an outside
> linguist describing the Klingon language (NOT respecting the traditional
> classical analysis) would probably call most of the type-5 noun suffixes
> (with the possible exception of -'e') postpositions and not suffixes (they
> migrate to ends of noun-clauses modified by verbs, etc).  (Please, don't
> get me wrong.  I'm not arguing with Okrand.  We call -Ha' a
> rover when it
> doesn't rove and all.  Just saying that from a linguistic perspective, -Daq
> is really more properly a postposition, not a suffix).

Given the population you are addressing here, it might be
appropriate to define "postposition". I suspect most readers
here have never heard the word.

[snip]
> (1a)
>             rel clause
>         /--------------\
> qachDaq Qaw'bogh nawlogh SoplI' HoD
> \---------------------------------/
>            main clause
> 
> This is the meaning "In the building, the captain was eating the squadron
> which destroyed (stuff in general)."  Note how the main clause is
> interrupted by the relative clause, but contains it whole; the clause
> simply drops into a place inside it.  Neat recursive containment, the
> mental stack just pushes the "qachDaq" information in, parses the relative
> clause, pops back, and all's well--and linguistically brains really DO work
> with (fairly shallow) stacks, apparently.
> 
> (1b)
> 
> /----------------------\
> qachDaq Qaw'bogh nawlogh SoplI' HoD
>                          \--------/
> 
> This is the meaning "The captain was eating (the squadron which destroyed
> in the building)."  Strictly speaking, the main clause bar should include
> the whole sentence, but that wouldn't be very informative.  Basically, the
> whole relative clause exists first, gets parsed and remembered, and then
> passed as the first element in the main clause.  Also continuous, actually
> simpler than above.  Here there's no mixing of clauses, and no
> interruption.  The other one has a small interruption, but just one, and
> for a whole notion.

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.

> (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.

> 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: 

[snip]

> 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."

If we have to accept this, I suggest an ammendment to this
grammar:

?qach'e' Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD.

When we hear this one word at a time, it parses like this:

qach'e' = The BUILDING ...

qach'e' Qaw'bogh = The building that was destroyed by some
explicit noun we have not heard yet.

qach'e' Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq = In the building that was
destroyed by the squadron.

The rest of the sentence is easy.

Meanwhile, without the {-'e'}, we attempt to parse:

qach = The building

qach Qaw'bogh = The building which he destroyed

qach Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq = At the squadron which destroyed the
building...

qach Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' = He ate at the squadron which
destroyed the building ?

qach Qaw'bogh nawloghDaq SoplI' HoD = The captain ate at the
squadron which destroyed the building. ???

Only the obviously demented meaning of this sentence gives us a
clue that something is wrong. With the {-'e'} we can understand
the grammar even without specific meaning given to the words.

A-'e' B-bogh C-Daq E-lI' F.

"F was doing E at the A that C Bed."

Without {-'e'} we have no clue.

> 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?

> ~mark

charghwI'

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