tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 22 17:16:16 2006
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Re: yopwaH
- From: "QeS 'utlh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: yopwaH
- Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 11:16:01 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' Shane MiQogh, ja':
>They are either plural or singular for a reson.
As I said, if you can tell us what that reason is, then we *might* (but
then, we might not) have a basis for saying that {yopwaH} is plural.
>If a *PAIR* of pants were a singular entity, then so would the klingon
>version.
Again, Klingon is not a code for English, so there's no reason why the
grammar of Klingon words needs to map to that of English words. A pair of
pants *is* a singular entity. I don't think anyone would argue that a pair
of pants is actually somehow two articles of clothing.
>It's hard to explain this, but... While looking it up, i realize that some
>other languages have it as "pant",
Most others, in fact. The other languages I can think of the word "pants" in
(French, Turkish and Ubykh) all treat it as grammatically singular.
...
>So, really, we would have to talk about okrand about this, cause he's the
>one that made the word, and only he can tell us weather it's plural or
>singular
>in klingon.
That's true, but in the meantime we can make a reasonable guess based upon
Klingon canon (which is what we often must do in the absence of any other
evidence). In Klingon, there's not one attested instance of a noun that is
treated as grammatically plural although it's semantically singular. In
fact, the opposite situation is the one we find: semantically plural nouns
such as {ngop} "plates" are treated as grammatically singular, not plural.
For this reason, I still think that {yopwaH} is not a grammatically (or
semantically) plural noun, and that {yopwaHDaj 'oH yopwaHvam'e'} "these
pants are his pants" is the correct form, not *{yopwaHDaj bIH yopwaHvam'e'}.
QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute
not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
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