tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 19 07:33:40 1993
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More on Greater Than/Less Than
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Tue, 19 Oct 93 09:09:52 EDT
>Content-Length: 2185
>I see what you mean. Except for maybe one thing: Since, in "la' jaq law'",
>"la'" is singular, it would be possibly translated into "many bold commander".
>In this situation, at least, it should be pretty obvious that "many" doesn't
>apply to "commander", but rather to "bold".
No, "la'" isn't particularly singular. Number is an optional category in
Klingon (TKD 3.3.2). It is correct to use "la' jaq" to mean "bold
officers", especially if there's another construct in the sentence to
indicate the plurality, like a plural prefix.... or a word like "law'".
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall any example of noun-adjective-
>adjective constructions at all within TKD; by this point alone we could make
>a case for the above; a "house ruling", if you will, that an adjective only
>modifies what comes immediately before. This may seem a bit prohibitive,
>but I don't think so. For instance:
>"Shiny Red Thing" would be Doch Doq boch. Literally (according to the
>premise above), it would be translated as "thing which is red which is
>shiny". This differs semantically from the English "Red Shiny Thing",
>which seems to imply that "red" modifies how it shines.
I don't think so. Generally, even in English, multiple adjectives are more
or less independent. I don't hear a difference between "red shiny thing"
and "shiny red thing" myself. Both mean a thing that is red and shiny.
Now, the fact that "red" and "shiny" both deal with how the thing reflects
light implies a certain interaction, but is a "slow shiny thing" something
that shines slowly, while a "shiny slow thing" is something that is slow in
a shiny way?
I don't think there are any double-adjective examples in the canon, but I
support allowing them.
>...Paul
~mark