tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 01 21:22:26 1994

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Re: Adams Family Motto:



batlh choja', [email protected] quv:

=Whoever dictated that the relative clause must have an explicit head noun?
=I've just read TKD section 6.2.3 very carefully and I find that its
=implications in no way could support an argument in favor of required
=explicit head nouns. 

Well, I've just read 6.2.3., and I find it rather heavily supports the
argument. "Like adjectives, they describe nouns... The whole construction
(relative clause plus head noun), as a unit, is used in a sentence as a
noun." etc.

=In this case, the head noun is an implicit {chaH}. I see nothing wrong with
=that. But not being a grammarian, I must of course be totally open to any
=disagreements.

*shrug* I find it confusing, vague, and quite unneccesary since -wI' exists.
It's copying a hardly vernacular or productive feature of English, and the
whole point of the Latin construct it is based on is that the head noun is
*not* absent (eg. Benedictus *qui* venit in nomine Domini; *hon* oi theoi
filousin apothne:iskei neos, in Latin and Ancient Greek respectively; for the 
Addams phrase, *qui* nos vincerent, laete edimus; *hoi* he:mas nike:sein
boulo:ntai eukharisto:s esthiomen), since it is the relative pronoun --- 
something Klingon doesn't have. In short, this is the first time I've seen a 
*Latinisation* of Klingon grammar, and I really doubt it can travel well 
into so different a grammatical system...

=I want to commend charghwI' for a fine Klingonization of this phrase. The
=original quote from the movie was, "We gladly feast on those who would subdue
=us." Looking at this sentence, a number of potential complaints could arise
=on the part of the translator, such as "How can I say 'gladly' without an
=adverbial former, and how can I say 'would subdue' without any sort of
=subjunctive form in Klingon??"
=But did charghwI' whine about these? Absolutely not. He got around these
=restrictions remarkably well.

Oh. Well. I don't know who you could possibly be aluding to whining ;) ,
but though I agree with you in general about charghwI''s style, I don't
about this sentence, with it's tottering, long-distance dependency
between nucharghta' and luneHbogh. Atypically for him, it is in fact rather
verbose, and I would suggest instead:

nucharghqangwI' wISopchu'mo', maQuch.

-qang isn't all there is to subjunctives, of course, though it's no
coincidence that "laik" is used in Melanesian Pidgin with that meaning...

-- 
 /|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||\
|  "One must first know that traditionally a Japanese bus has carried not |
| only a driver but one or more young girls who stand in the aisles and   |
| sell tickets, announce stops, and in general console the passengers for |
| the inadequacies and discomforts of this transient world."              \
|               --- Roy Andrew Miller,  _The Japanese Language_,  p. 251   |
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\||||[email protected]||||||Transient Passenger|||||||Nick Nicholas||||
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