tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 23 05:48:01 2007
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Re: Klingon WOTD: pel'aQ (noun)
- From: "QeS 'utlh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Klingon WOTD: pel'aQ (noun)
- Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:45:57 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' Doq, ja':
>Eggs are not body parts. They are living beings, incapable of using
>language. The plural uses {-mey}. Egg shells are body parts. The plural
>uses {-Du'}.
*Should* or *may* use {-Du'}. Please don't state it so definitively if you
have no canon to back up your statement. Personally, I think the idea of
eggshells as body parts is a bit of a stretch, and in the absence of canon
evidence I would accept either {pel'aQDu'} or {pel'aQmey}.
I believe that one of the salient features of the body part gender in
Klingon is inalienability. This isn't stated explicitly in canon, but I
think it can be inferred from the behaviour of body part nouns when they
take the suffix {-mey}. If you mark a body part noun - let's say {ghop}
"hand" - with {-mey} instead of {-Du'}, the meaning is "hands scattered all
about"; by definition, such hands would be alienated from their bodies,
thence grammatically alienable. By contrast, {ghopDu'} would be used to
refer to one's hands attached to one's body, as in "I'm going to wash my
hands". Okrand's exposition says something similar about {veDDIrmey}, and I
believe that {tlhonmey} is also discussed in canon. Eggshells are alienable
- in fact, they must be alienable by their nature. They're temporary
receptacles that must be alienated from the creature they contain if that
creature is to survive. Because they're such inherently alienable objects, I
don't think Klingons would see eggshells as necessarily belonging to the
{-Du'} gender. Perhaps {pel'aQ} is one of those words that differs in gender
from speaker to speaker, like {qaryoq}.
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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