tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Oct 25 13:57:42 1993
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porghpu' porghDu' porghmey joq
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 15:57:56 EDT
>I don't remember the beginning of this thread, but doesn't it say in TKD
>that objects that are capable of language take -pu', but may take -mey
>to represent "scattered". They say it doesn't happen with body parts,
>except in poetic instances. Is the question just of the plural "bodies",
>or of a specific expression? Remember that plural suffixes aren't always
>necessary; depending on the circumstances, you might as well just use "porgh"
>and let the plurality be derived from context.
This is true, as I mentioned; there's always {porgh law'}. We were sort of
ignoring the "scattered" meaning of "-mey", because saying "porghmey" when
talking about "scattered" would beg the question of what to do when they
weren't scattered: would it be still "porghmey" (treating "porgh" as just
any non-sentient noun), or "porghpu'" (treating it as sentient)?
>On the topic of context, how is "body" intended? It could be just the
>trunk of a person (whole body minus head, arms, legs), or do you want it
>to mean "body", as in whole bodies?
*sigh*. Wish Okrand would have defined his words with more than one to
three English words. It's just plain not enough.
>In that sense, perhaps the appropriate suffix actually changes; If you
>wanted to convey "bodies" as in "How many able bodies do we have left?"
>then perhaps porghpu' would be appropriate. If you wanted to convey the
>anatomical "body", perhaps -Du' would be better; "They had cuts all over
>their bodies". And then if you wanted to enforce the dead body sense, you
>might be able to use -mey "There were bodies everywhere!"
Again, you can probably break a few rules here and there to get a specific
meaning, especially in a borderline case like this where it's not even
certain which rule obtains. Though to talk about bodies, as in corpses,
being everywhere, I'd use {lommey}, and that wouldn't imply "scattered",
since they're not language-using in the first place. You'd have to express
it otherwise, like in {Dat lommey tu'lu'}.
~mark