tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 21 00:29:03 2011
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Irregular plurals & prefixes
On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 06:29, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 1:42 PM, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Irregular plurals are treated as grammatically singular.
>
> The Klingon Dictionary says this explicitly on page 24.
>
> (Actually, it refers to them as "inherently plural" nouns, a phrase
> also used consistently in Klingon for the Galactic Traveler. The term
> "irregular plurals" seems to have been invented by people like us.)
At qepHom'a' wa'maHDIch, Quvar suggested the German translation
"Geschirr" for {ngop}, which is a collective noun meaning, roughly,
"china", "tableware", "plates etc." - to help people realise that
treating such nouns as singular is normal.
Since then, I've been wondering whether such "inherently plural" nouns
can be considered a kind of collective noun along the lines of
"furniture" -- you say "the furniture *is* dirty" even if several
items of furniture are dirty (that is, you use a singular verb for
multiple objects, since you're using a collective noun to refer to all
of them together).
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <[email protected]>
_______________________________________________
Tlhingan-hol mailing list
[email protected]
http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol
![[KLI Member]](/pics/KLImemberbutton.gif "[KLI Member]"){kind=small}
![[Hol ghojwI']](/pics/level2_big.png "[Hol ghojwI']"){kind=small}