tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 14 20:03:46 1998
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Re: cheghta' be'nalwI' - jajmaj wa'DIch
>>ja' pagh:
>>>(1) I've always been curious about this usage - *Sarah* lupDuj =
>>>"Sarah's plane". I'm not sure the Klingon can go there. She certainly
>>>doesn't own the thing - it is just associated with her for the moment...
ja' Voragh:
>{*Sarah* lupDuj} is perfectly kosher. In fact, in ST5 Okrand used a nearly
>identical phrase:
>
>Vixis: nImbuS wejDaq 'ejDo' 'entepray' ngeHlu'pu'.
> The starship Enterprise has been dispatched to Nimbus III.
>Klaa: 'entepray''e'? qerq Duj 'oH!
> Enterprise? That's Kirk's ship!
>
>Obviously Kirk doesn't possess or own the ship, it's just closely associated
>with him.
I hesitate to call these kinds of close association "nearly identical". The
association between a captain and his ship is very nearly one of possession;
it is at least one of complete control. A passenger or crewman aboard that
ship doesn't have an association nearly as close as the captain does.
>There's another noun-noun construction here {'ejDo' 'entepray'}:
>again the "starship" doesn't actually own the Enterprise, Starfleet does.
I think this has to be interpreted as something other than the kind of
noun-noun described in TKD, though. It's an instance of apposition.
>The confusion comes in Okrand's infelicitous choice of the term "possession"
>for one noun directly modifying another. Indeed, in his first example in TKD
>(p.31) {nuH pegh} "the secret of the weapon, the weapon's secret", there is
>no question of ownership. He probably wanted to avoid terms like "genitive"
>or "construct" in what was, after all, intended as a popular book on the
>Klingon language.
The {nuH pegh} example sure sounds like ownership to me, but I discovered
some time ago that my idea of "possession" or "ownership" matches closely
the linguistic idea of "genitive".
-- ghunchu'wI'