tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 25 16:56:38 1993
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relative clauses (again)
- From: (Mark E. Shoulson) <[email protected]>
- Subject: relative clauses (again)
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 93 10:00:05 -0400
- In-Reply-To: Jacques Guy's message of Wed, 25 Aug 1993 08:53:25 +1000 (EST) <[email protected]>
>From: [email protected] (Jacques Guy)
>Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 08:53:25 +1000 (EST)
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20]
>yaS vIlegh qIppu'bogh puq = I see the officer whom the child hit
>yaS qIppu'bogh puq vIlegh = I see the child who hit the officer
Hmm... I can see where it's coming from, but it really doesn't square with
what we know of the grammar. "-bogh" is supposed to turn a clause into the
syntactic equivalent of a noun; something that can be a subject or an
object. And you're.... oh, I see. You're just rearranging the sentence,
interpolating the main verb inside the relative clause to bring it closer
to the noun it wants. Something in me doesn't like it, I'm afraid. It
still seems not to be in line with the grammar, and I fear it can get
confusing.
>It's not all roses, though:
>How do you link together:
>puq HoH yaS
>yaS qIppu' puq
>First step is pretty obvious:
>yaS qIppu'bogh puq HoH yaS = the officer kills the child who hit him
>Second not so: which "yaS" do you delete, if any?
In this case, as in your second sentence, your construction is the same as
mine, modulo the possible "-'e'" flag. I'd say delete neither yaS, or
maybe the second. If you delete the first, it'd would look lacking to me
unless you at least threw in a "ghaH" to hold the place.
>Thinking back now, there is some underlying logic in that
>madness: the verb of the main clause refers to the nearest
>noun phrase in the relative clause. This accounts for the
>four examples p.64 in the KD:
>qIppu'bogh yaS vIlegh
>mulegh qIppu'bogh yaS
>yaS qIppu'bogh vIlegh
>mulegh yaS qIppu'bogh
>In my doubtfully correct "yaS vIlegh qIppu'bogh puq" I moved
>the main verb next to its object "yaS" (why not? Catullus
>does far stranger things: figure his "sed mulier cupido quod
>dicit amanti" out). The only other way I can think of this
>moment is to repeat the noun: yaS qIppu'bogh puq yaS vIlegh.
Well, there's the ambiguous "yaS qIppu'bogh puq vIlegh", which can be taken
to mean either the officer or the child, or the "-'e'" flagged "yaS'e'
qIppu'bogh puq vIlegh" (no, that's not ambiguous with the topical use
"-'e'". It's simply an *instance* of it. Here, the "-'e'" is indicating
the *topic* of the relative clause. As I recall, Okrand approved this use
of "-'e'" fairly heartily, not with a sigh of resignation. But check with
Krankor, who asked).
>Hmmm... yuQDaq yaS qIppu'bogh puq yuQ vIQaw' ?? Sounds
>reasonable. There seems to be no compelling reason either
>for the relative clause to precede: yuQ vIQaw' yuQDaq...
>sounds just as reasonable (but I'm no native Klingon speaker).
Well, if you lose the "-bogh" altogether you wind up with a perfectly
normal pair of sentences that will pragmaticalli mean roughly what you
wanted: "yuQ vIQaw'; yuQDaq yaS qIppu' puq" -- I destroy a planet. On the
planet, the child hit the officer". As you say, "-vam" or "-vetlh" might
help.
Then, there's the flip side to the "ship on which the officer ate qagh"
problem: how about "On the ship which destroyed the planet"? (or the
combination, "on the ship on which the officer ate qagh", but that's
another problem). I am far less inclined to invent rules and suffixes than
Mr. Appleyard, so I would rather force myself to do this in the framework
we have. There are circumlocutions like j.guy uses, which I think are
serviceable, such as "yuQ Qaw'pu' Duj; DujDaq yaS qIppu' puq", very similar
to the above. Maybe something like "yuQ Qaw'pu'bogh DujDaq yaS qIppu'
puq". Now let's stop and look at this one a second. I didn't like it at
first glance, and I'm still not sure I do, but it deserves some study. The
implication here is that you can attach type 5 suffixes to nouns in a
relative clause and have the suffixes be meaningful in the *main* clause
but *not* the relative. That is, in the above example, the "-Daq" on "Duj"
applies to the main clause ("*on* the ship which...") but not to the
relative clause ("the ship which..."). Note there is ambiguity here as to
where to split the clauses. The obvious place, without using the thoughts
I'm discussing would be "yuQ Qaw'pu'bogh; DujDaq yaS qIppu' puq", leaving a
sentence fragment, possibly attached to a previous sentence ("the planet
which (he/she/it) destroyed; on the ship, the child [had] hit the
officer"). This may be a clue to hook the sentence up the other way. Note
the even more confusing possible use of type 5's on the object of the
relative clause: "yuQDaq Qaw'pu'bogh Duj yaS qIppu' puq" -- "on the planet
which the ship destroyed, the child [had] hit the officer". We get the
usual ambiguity of whether or not the "yuQDaq" is part of the relative or
main clause, compounded by the now-postulated possibility that it may be in
both; in one with the "-Daq" and in one without. This stuff doesn't seem t
help all that much with the "On the ship on which the officer ate qagh"
problem; you wind up wanting to put two "-Daq"'s on the same word. But
maybe one will do.
Maybe this bizarre thought will appeal to you, maybe you'll find it worse
than j.guy's sentence-rearrangement. But it's qagh for thought.
~mark