tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 30 15:26:26 2004
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Re: KLBC -meH
Dar'Qang:
>Although it's most likely that I am simply not seeing something, it has
>now occurred to me that possibly Dr. Okrand originally intended for the
>-meH clause to be more restrictive, but then backed off for some
>reason. The Klingonska Akademien page cites TKD for the "truce"
>example. It might be interesting to see TKD examples, or examples that
>use something like {ja'chuqmeH rojHom} in a full sentence.
Most of these "{-meH} noun phrases" are just known as isolated examples, e.g.:
{SuvwI' DevmeH paq} "A Warrior's Guide" ( or "guidebook") TKW
{qa'meH vIttlhegh} "replacement proverb" (derived from {quvqa'meH
vIttlhegh") (HQ 5.1)
{SopmeH pa'} "dining room, eating room" (st.klingon)
{HoS QaymeH 'och} "power transfer conduit" KBoP
{Qapchu'meH 'aqroS chuq} "Maximum Effective Range" KBoP
but I did manage to find three:
tera' vatlh DIS poH cha'maH loS bong QongmeH qItI'nga' Duj tI'ang
ghompu' DIvI' 'ejDo' 'entepray'
A sleeper ship of this [K'Tinga] class, the T'Ong, was encountered
in the 24th century by the USS Enterprise. S15
{QongmeH Duj} "a sleeper ship"
ngongmeH wa' DujDaq nuHmey nISbe'bogh So'wI' jomlu'pu'
[A cloaking device which didn't disrupt weapons was installed in one
experimental ship.] S33 (untranslated on card)
{ngongmeH Duj} "experimental ship, prototype"
Hmm... notice the position of {wa'}; I would have expected ?{wa' ngongmeH
DujDaq...}. (It's hard to tell exactly what's going on here because the
English translation was inadvertently omitted on the card.)
tlhIngan juHqo'Daq tlhIng yoSDaq 'oH toQDuj chenmoHlu'meH Daq wa'DIch'e'
1st Construction Site: The Kling District, Klingon Home World. (KBoP)
{chenmoHlu'meH Daq} "construction site" (you can form these with {-lu'} as
well). Although the English isn't, the Klingon is a grammatically complete
sentence.
Hmm... I just noticed how the {-Daq} is repeated in the two-part
location. I don't know if this is a requirement of style, or if the
meaning is something like "the first construction site of the Bird-of-Prey
is in the Kling District, on the Klingon Homeworld".
I think the consensus on how these type of noun phrases work is like this:
This canon sentence contains a purpose clause:
cha'puj vIngevmeH chaw' HInobneS.
Give me a permit to sell dilithium, your honor. PK
("Give me a permit for me to sell dilithium...")
You can tell it's a subordinate clause because {ngev} has the object prefix
{vI-}. But if we modify it by removing the prefix, then it becomes a
{-meH}ed noun phrase (or "purpose noun" if you prefer), and the entire
phrase is the object of {nob}:
?cha'puj ngevmeH chaw' HInobneS.
Give me a permit to sell dilithium, your honor. PK
("Give me a dilithium selling permit ...")
The finer points of using these "purpose nouns" is one of the things we
still need to discuss with Maltz.
[Does anyone know of any more of these used in a sentence?]
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons