tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 16 14:06:37 1998
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Re: Appositive
- From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Appositive
- Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 16:05:36 -0500
At 12:32 PM 9/16/98 -0700, Voragh wrote:
>More thoughts on appositives in Klingon. In addition to:
...
>As for ranks and titles:
>
> When used with an individual's name, a title follows the name: tlha'a
> HoD (Captain Klaa), cheng Sa' (General Chang), qeng la' (Commander
> Kang), and so on." (KGT 52)
>
> If someone has an official title, such as a military rank or a position
> in the government, this title follows the name; for example, martaq Sa'
> (General Martok), ghawran Qang (Chancellor Gowron). When addressing such
> a person, the title is left off only when the occasion is decidedly
> nonofficial." (KGT 197f)
>
>These make no sense as possessives. {tlha'a HoD}, {cheng Sa'}, {ghawron
>Qang} are certainly not "Klaa's captain", "Chang's general" or "Gowron's
>chancellor".
At the risk of seeming like a rabid nitpicker 8+), while these don't
make sense in the narrow meaning of possession, they do make sense in
terms of the larger Genitive construction that Holtej wrote about
in a HolQeD a while back. I've long thought that the essence of the N-N
construction is that N1 restricts the set of items implied by N2.
/yaS taj/ = of the universe of knives, the one belonging to the officer.
So, titles seem to me to fit perfectly: /tlha'a HoD/ = of the universe
of captains, the one who is Klaa. They're not really appositives, which
start with the more general term, followed by the specific instances of
that term.
-- ter'eS