tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 05 20:58:47 2006
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RE: A tangled knot of subordinate clauses
- From: McArdle <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: A tangled knot of subordinate clauses
- Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 20:58:30 -0800 (PST)
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- In-reply-to: <[email protected]>
Agnieszka Solska <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>While we lack canonical examples I have seen and heard people use
>{Hech}
>with nominal objects.
>
>> If not, I'm in a pretty pickle because "what I meant" must become
>>something like "what I intended to say" or "what I intended to
>>communicate", which brings me right back to the unsolved problem of
>>translating phrases like "what you think I said", but this time with
>no
>>handy suffix hack ({-law'} in {vIjatlhlaw'pu'bogh}) to fall back on.
>
>I agree, this is tough.
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think it might be possible to create a relative clause that uses 'e' as its head. For example, if {vay' vIjatlhpu' 'e' DaQub} can be glossed in English as something like "I said something; you think that", then maybe "what you think I said" is {vay' vIjatlhpu'bogh 'e' DaQubbogh}, "something I said, that which you think". The major points I can see against this, beyond what I assume is a total absence of canonical examples, are that TKD refers to head nouns and not head pronouns, and specifically says that "'e' and net . . . refer to the previous sentence as a whole", whereas relative clauses like {vay' vIjatlhpu'bogh} are not sentences. But perhaps these are not insuperable objections.
Another possibility, to which these objections don't apply, is to dispense with {'e'} entirely and make the subordinate clause temporal. "What you think I said" is then something like "what you were thinking while I was speaking":
{vay' DaQub'bogh jIjatlhtaHvIS} (if {jatlh} can be used intransitively)
{vay' DaQub'bogh vay' vIjathltaHvIS} (otherwise)
In the case of the main verb {Hech}, this construct runs right up against the same question of whether {Hech} can take an object other than {'e'}. If we got here because it can't, I'm just as stymied as ever. Otherwise "what I meant to say" might be {vay' vIHechbogh jIjatlhtaHvIS}.
> [clip]
>> This is reminiscent of an exercise in the Postal Course referring to
>the
>>"hands" of a clock. Does this require the body-part plural suffix?
>Or,
>>since the usage is metaphorical, is the general non-sentient plural
>used
>>instead?
>
>I had no idea that a {tlhaq} has hands. ;)
In fact it may not. The sentence being translated to Klingon is: "His watch doesn't have hands." There's no mention of watches or other timepieces that do have hands.
qavan
mIq'ey
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