tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 18 09:29:43 2009

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Re: Klingon Ad for my new novel!

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

"pretty little girl's school"!

It's a natural-language feature, and not all that uncommon.  I enjoy the ambiguity.  If you like certainty, learn Lojban!

-- ter'eS

--- On Mon, 5/18/09, QeS 'utlh <[email protected]> wrote:

> From: QeS 'utlh <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Klingon Ad for my new novel!
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Monday, May 18, 2009, 8:59 AM
> qaStaHvIS poH nI' pagh vIjatlhpu', Qu'mey
> law' vIghajtaHmo'. 'ach
> mubuSmoHpu' qaSqa'bogh tetlh
> ja'chuqqa'ghach chu', vaj jIjeSqa' jIH.
> Savanqa'! 'ej bI'reng: SoH qavan je;
> qaSovbe'pu'. jumuvta'mo' jIbel.
> 
> ghItlhpu' bI'reng, ja':
> >Personally, I've never minded N to the nth
> constructions. It only gets
> >difficult to parse when you nouns that are also verbs
> and verbs that
> >are also adjectivials.
> 
> qay' latlh: DIp lurarlu'meH rarbogh mu'
> lo'lu'chugh, {D-D} {D},
> {D} {D-D}, {D} {D} {D} ghap 'oSlaHqu'
> mu'tlheghHom'e' chenmoHbogh
> tlhegh {DIp-DIp-DIp}. tInchoHchugh DIp mu'tlheghHom,
> qay'qu'choH je:
> "Duras's child and the emperor", "Duras
> and the child-emperor", "Duras,
> the child and the emperor" 'oSlaH . (jISIm: 
> DIpmey
> 'abchugh DIp-DIp mu'tlheghHom, chenlaHbogh
> DIp'e' *tlhegh-DIpmey'e' je,
> (T-1)-logh cha' boq'eghpu'bogh cha' 'oH
> mI''e'.)
> 
> S26 mu'tlhegh'e', chaq lugh je qech
> qelta'bogh SuStel: chaq tlhIngan
> jatlhwI'vaD wa' mu''a' luDa <>
> <> je. vaj pab qellu'chugh, vagh DIpmey
> tu'lu', 'ach jatlhlu'taHvIS, chaq wej neH
> tu'lu' net yaj. vaj {D-D-D-D}
> latlh DIp mu'tlheghmey tIn je vIjun je jIH, 'ach
> maQochlaw' Lawrence
> jIH je {D-D-D} vIparbe'mo', 'ej rut lo'laH
> je DIp mu'tlheghHommey
> tInqu' 'e' cha' S26.
> ---
> My biggest problem with them is that a string {N-N-N} with
> a
> conjunction can feasibly be {N-N} {N}, {N} {N-N} or {N} {N}
> {N}, and
> this gets geometrically worse as the length of the noun
> string
> increases: {DuraS puq voDleH je} could be "Duras's
> child and the
> emperor", "Duras and the child-emperor"
> (using apposition), or even
> "Duras, the child and the emperor". (FWIW, if
> I've calculated right,
> for a noun-noun construction of size T, the number
> of possible noun phrase combinations is equal to 2^(T-1):
> so the
> string {N N N N N N} has 32 possible combinations of noun
> phrases.)
> 
> In the S26 example, I imagine SuStel's point about
> {tlhIngan Hol} might
> equally apply: {DuraS tuq} "the House of Duras"
> and {tlhIngan yejquv}
> "the Klingon High Council" are semantically both
> pretty tightly knit
> units, so even if it's grammatically a five-noun
> construction,
> pragmatically it may really only be seen as three.
> That's the reason
> why I tend to steer away from noun-noun constructions of
> longer than
> three elements, though unlike Lawrence I don't find
> N-N-N overly
> clunky or cumbersome, and as S26 shows, there are instances
> where even
> longer strings of nouns can be reasonable in practice.
> 
> Savan,
> 
> QeS 'utlh
> 
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