tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 09 07:46:54 1994
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Re: nuqneH
- From: [email protected] (Nick NICHOLAS)
- Subject: Re: nuqneH
- Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 09:42:41 +1000 (EST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "William H. Martin" at Aug 9, 94 00:10:57 am
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' William H. Martin jay'?
=Great reply. You got me thinking.
Likewise! You also got me to check the TKD, which I tend to avoid, because
all sort of nasty surprises lie therein. ;) I was rather taken aback, however,
to see your tone almost apologetic. Charghwi', grammatical errors aside, the
forms you propose are the canonical, easy-to-understand one; I'm the one
introducting more outlandish constructs, so surely I should be doing the
defending bit, not you.
=> As I said last Thursday at the _Death by Chocolate_ restaurant: "Let's get
=> ready to *Rumball*!"
The _Death By Chocolate_, by the way, is a vajna' dish. Ten chocolate desserts
on the one plate: choc ice cream, mousse, rumball, choc cake, fudge cake,
choc mint... SIQnIS vajna'!
=>I've taken to considering -meH NOUN as a separate unit from the clause, rather
=> than letting the -meH clause describe the verb. It's odd, but I think it's
=>allowed by the fine print. ja'chuqmeH rojHom, in TKD, has a meaning by itself:
=> "a truce for conferring". I don't think it's that bad to use jIjangmeH Qu'
=> to mean "a task done in order to answer".
=Fully living up to your reputation for finding uniquely weird,
=but probably correct ways of saying things, resulting in your
=ability to translate "Don't get around much anymore" in verse
=and meter, Nick strikes again! Thank you for noticing what I
=missed. Now, if I can just make sense out of it...
Now now, easy with the compliments! What I have proposed is novel, and *not*
at all obvious. If it's managed to confuse you, it can't be that good a
proposal. I think the TKD doesn't go against it, and I think it's something
natural languages tend to do (in Lojban terms, it's interpreting -meH clauses
as pemu'i da, as well as mu'i da). But it is not obvious, and you certainly
shouldn't take my word for it.
The motivation for this construct was in fact our jihad against nominalisations.
It's one of the ways I get around the Sentence as Subject construct: jIjangmeH
Qu' basically is intended to mean the same as jIjangtaHghach, but more verb-
than noun-oriented.
Tori Amos is on the radio, and now I know why I avoid playing her CD. SaQ
vajna' 'utDI' net chaw'.
=> I usually actually state this as "Doctor pop SuqmeH" [rather than Doctor
popvaD]
=Good. Stick to the usual. It works better.
You're not wrong.
=> *smile* No he didn't. TKD appendix: lo' is also a noun.
=Qu'vatlh! The whole reason I spent all that time making up my
=own Annotated Klingon Dictionary was so I'd catch this sort of
=thing. Of course, this time, I knew the word so well I didn't
=bother to look it up. Right?
Well, yeah; and no need to be concerned about it; lo' as a noun *is* rather
unexpected.
=> What I actually intended is for tlhIngan Hol to be a locative argument of
=> qaS, not of wIlo': (tlhIngan Hol wIlo'bogh)Daq, wej qaS... Since we've
=Would {-vaD} work here? It is late here and I need sleep, so
=my brain is not quite fully engaged. {HolvaD}.
Actually, yeah, that does work for me. majQa'!
=> => 'ach qasbejpu' choHHommey latlh, Hol'a' wIlo'taHvIS.
=> ="But while we use the significant-language, another one of
=> =less-significant-changes has definitely happened." I'm
=> =frequently tempted to use {latlh} as an adjectival verb for {be
=> =other}, but it just isn't and it doesn't work when we try to
=> =use it that way. In this sentence, I'd just drop it and trust
=> =that the meaning is carried well without it.
=> I've become so accustomed to this Markan usage that I don't bat an eyelid
=> any more over it; it's become as entrenched as NOUN Hoch...
=Okay. I think.
Well now, just because Mark and I have become accustomed to the sound of our
own voices, doesn't mean that we're automatically right. Sometimes this usage
of latlh can get really strained. On the other hand, Hoch is being used
in pretty much the same way, and I believe it has canon support...
--
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Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne. [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
AND MOVING SOON TO: [email protected]