tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Apr 10 18:18:26 2004

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Re: joj usage...

QeS lagh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' Dar'Qang:

>The main thing confusing me, I think, is that I see two parses that are 
>plausible
>within the rules of the grammar, but the experts favor an implausible parse 
>of using {je} to join two verb phrases.  Probably the best thing that I can 
>do is
>describe the two parses that I see, and someone can point out the flaws:

With the first one, as SuStel points out, you're depending upon the 
existence of headless relatives. These in themselves are questionable in 
Klingon grammar. We recently (re-)argued about the example of {Dajatlhbogh 
vIyajlaHbe'}.

With the second one, nested relative clauses (as SuStel suggests) wouldn't 
need {je}: theoretically it would be sufficient to just say {yoHbogh 
matlhbogh SuvwI'}, divided thus: {yoHbogh <matlhbogh SuvwI'>} "the <warrior 
who is brave> who is loyal". There's no room for {je} in that clause that I 
can see, since it's an adverb that links the sentence back to a previous 
one. "The warrior who is also brave and true". In addition to what? It seems 
to imply that there's something else that the warrior is.

That aside, there's no need for nested clauses: one could just say {yoHbogh 
SuvwI' matlh} "the loyal warrior who is brave".

If you have a look at the stresses in the grammatical version and the Anthem 
version of the same sentence, you'll see the difference in how well it 
scans:

{yoHbogh SuvwI' 'ej matlhbogh} - High Low Low High High High Low
{yoHbogh matlhbogh je SuvwI'} - High Low High Low High Low High

Much better cadence in the second one.

Savan

QeS lagh

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