tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 11 20:00:02 2004

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Re: nom ghel, nom jang

...Paul ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004, David Trimboli wrote:
> From: "Lieven L. Litaer (Quvar)" <[email protected]>
> Consider these two English sentences:
>
> The ship is a noun.
> "Ship" is a noun.
>
> (In English, it's also a verb, but that's not relevant here.)
>
> In spoken English, the only difference between these two sentences is the
> definite article on "ship."  The first sentence is false (or nonsensical),
> the second is true.

I don't think that's entirely true.  The first sentence doesn't make
sense, even in English.  "The ship is a noun".  Which ship?  The use of
the definite article indicates a particular instance.  The equivalent
English sentence would be "The word ship is a noun" (hmm, not sure
where/if there's punctuation in there).

If I were speaking about the word "ship", I would never say "the ship".  I
would either say ONLY "ship" or the phrase "the word 'ship'".

> Now, you can use the same punctuation trick you use in written English to
> disambiguate the Klingon:
>
> DIp 'oH <Duj>'e',
>
> but what you say hasn't changed.  The lack of articles in Klingon makes this
> ambiguity exist where it can't in English.

This I would agree with, but again, it works either a) by context (only
way to indicate this when speaking) or b) due to the fact that you've
employed a visual marker to the sentence to indicate that you are
referencing the word, not the concept.

> > then one can still see it as a noun-noun construction:
> >
> > like {qImla' pong} "kimla's name",
> > {Duj mu'} "the word of ship" or more fluent "the word for <ship>"
> > [the word that stands for the idea of "ship"]
>
> Klingon noun-noun constructions are genitive, not appositive.  I don't think
> this works, either.

I would say this is how you would specify the concept exactly.  You have
the concept of "ship"  as /Duj/.  What does that possess?  It possesses a
word that represents it.  /Duj mu'/ "the word of a/the ship".  I think
this works perfectly.

One comparable phrase I can think of is /tlhIngan Hol/.  It's not a
perfect match, because /tlhIngan/ references a being, and we are
comfortable with the idea of beings possessing things, even if they are
abstract, like "language" (can a being really "possess" a language?),
whereas the phrase /Duj mu'/ requires us to think about how an inanimate
object might "possess" an abstract concept like a word.

We do have the word /'oS/ that could be pressed into service if we wanted
to be REALLY explicit:  /Duj 'oSbogh mu'/ "The word that represents the
ship" (Oh, hrm, does /'oS/ mean "represent" in terms of legal
representation?)

...Paul

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