tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 24 10:26:56 1993

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relative clauses (more)

>From: [email protected] (Jacques Guy)
>Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1993 09:18:28 +1000 (EST)


>Mark Shoulson:
>> 
>> "the torpedo with which we destroyed the spaceship"
>> 
>> What about "Duj wIQaw'meH peng wIlo'bogh"?  Doesn't require postulating an
>> iunstrumental or anything.  The torpedo which we used in order to destroy
>> the spaceship.
>> 
>> 
>But that can also be "we who used a torpedo to destroy the spaceship",
>doesn't it? Further, meH indicating purpose, it seems to me that that
>sentence either implies that we missed, or does not make the outcome
>clear. How about "we fired a torpedo, it destroyed the spaceship" or
>something of the kind? But in that case, when turning that into a
>relative clause, where does bogh go? Fire, destroy, both? Or perhaps
>again:  Duj Qaw'pu'bogh pengmaj['e']  (our torpedo which destroyed the
>ship). Suits me better, because I got a feeling that Klingon is 
>supposed to be lapidary, Tacitus-style. 

I'd probably use "Duj wIQaw'meH peng wIlo'bogh maH'e'" for "we who used a
torpedo to destroy the spaceship," if I were interested in being so
precise.  Your sample sentence looks interesting, really...

>Now for a last piece of (perhaps heretical) thought: ambiguity does
>not really bother me. I can live with "yaS qIppu'bogh puq". It even
>makes things interesting! Come to think of it, is there an ambiguity
>there, or just an artifact of our way of thinking? Consider:
>the child who hit the officer, the officer whom the child hit.
>It all boils down to the same, doesn't it? A child hit an officer,
>period. Whether, next, we decide to ramble on about the child, or
>the officer, doesn't change anything to the fact that "a child hit
>an officer". So, isn't the ambiguity that we perceive in "yaS 
>qIppu'bogh puq vIlegh" in fact an artifact of our relative-clause
>straight jacket? I know, after all, quite a few languages which have
>nothing like our relative clauses. 

I can certainly agree with you, though my own personal taste seems to
prefer less ambiguous relative clauses at least.  Though the "-'e'" doesn't
necessrily help in cases like "The ship in which the officer ate qagh."
"DujDaq qagh Soppu'bogh yaS" could be referring to any of the *three*
heads, and "-Daq" forbids the use of "-'e'" to flag that one, unless we
relax the rule, as A. Appleyard suggests (though I generally don't like his
suggestions about additions or other liberties with the language, he has a
good point here, and I should give it some thought.  Please, this isn't a
flame, just my opinion on some (not all) of his points.  Just a difference
of opinion).  There are also circumloctutions like "qagh SoptaHvIS yaS
DujDaq ghaHbogh", though that's a bit hairy and also takes advantage of
using just the pronoun in the second clause instead of "yaS", avoiding
another two-headed case, but that may not always be possible.

Note, too, that in a sentence, "Duj wIQaw'meH peng wIlo'bogh" is likely to
be ambiguous, since the "-meH" clause might attach to the main clause of
the sentence and not just to the relative clause.  That kind of ambiguity
I'm perfectly content to live with.  Nobody said Klingon was unambiguous
(after all, "qalegh jIH je" is said to be ambiguous...)

~mark

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