tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 29 06:02:20 2011
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[Tlhingan-hol] paq'batlh no' Hol: pab
jIjatlhpu':
> I've deciphered the no' Hol from the prologue to the paq'batlh, and it proves
> to be quite interesting. Am I OK to post about it now, or do people want a
> little more time to work it out for themselves?
mujang De'vID, jatlh:
> I guess it's okay to post your analysis now. It's been a couple of
> days already and people who are inclined to try to decipher the {no'
> Hol} have probably already done so.
maj. There's a lot to talk about, so I might start with the grammar and do
phonology in another message. I'm going to mark no' Hol with an asterisk, just
to make sure it stays separate.
In large part the grammar seems unremarkable. It's quite close to ta' Hol in
most major ways and the noun and verb suffixes that are given are all cognate
with ta' Hol ones and at least seem to appear in the same general order. It's
the smaller details where the fun differences are, I reckon. We all already
knew that Klingon originally had an OSV word order: the proverb {qoH vuvbe'
SuS} "the wind does not respect a fool" (TKW, p.107) is given in no' Hol, as
*quq' syisi vivbat.
The noun conjunction "and" is *Dya (= {je}). Unlike in ta' Hol it appears after
each item in a list:
'usru Dya 'qinmaa Dya q'op Dya at
"energy, gods, [and] matter" (no idea what the *at is supposed to be)
The plural suffix for all nouns is *-maa, cognate with {-mey}. Weirdly, there
seems to be no gender in no' Hol; nouns capable of speech and body parts also
get *-maa (the prologue contains both *teqmaa "hearts" and *'qinmaa "gods",
which would be {tIqDu'} and {Qunpu'} in ta' Hol). Unfortunately the only Type
4 suffixes we get in no' Hol are *-DoDi and *-tyeDi (= ta' Hol {-Daj} and
{-chaj}), so we can't tell if possessive suffixes mark gender or not.
The topic noun of a pronoun-as-verb doesn't seem to need the topic-marking
suffix (presumably *-'a' or *-'at), as in Morskan:
*qom bengDoq 'uq'bug' Doq lipung
"they named the place which was under [their] feet"
(ta' Hol: qam bIngDaq 'oH(taH)bogh Daq'e' lupong)
What's quite striking is that three of the ta' Hol null prefixes are overt in
no' Hol. *'u- is probably third person plural subject, no object (though less
likely, it could also be a special reciprocal prefix):
*'ug'ubtyiq
"they fight each other"
(ta' Hol: ghobchuq)
*'e- is third person singular subject and object:
*netabq'ot 'usrutyeDi pog' 'eDyayloq'
"combined, nothing could defeat their power"
(ta' Hol: nItebHa' HoSchaj jeylaH pagh)
and *me- is third person plural subject and object:
*'qinmaa meqoot
"they destroyed the gods"
(ta' Hol: Qunpu' Qaw')
It seems possible to drop agreement prefixes, though in the instance where
*li- (= ta' Hol {lu-}) is dropped it could be for a number of reasons:
*Doq' tyemtoq'g'oty tyo teqmaa sye'q
"now the two hearts knew emptiness"
(ta' Hol: DaH chImtaHghach luSIQ cha' tIqDu')
It could be because there's an overt number, or it could be because both the
subject and object are overt - no way to be certain.
Is this how everyone else sees it, in the main?
QeS 'utlh
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