tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 03 20:30:23 1994

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Re: How do you get across Much or Some?



jar cha' jaj cha' Dochvam nughItlh chargwI':
          *    *    *

>>         Some of them are dishonorable.
>
>                ghomvetlhDaq quvHa' nuvpu' puS

          *    *    *
Is pu' really necessary?  I think not.  The plurality is implicit
in puS.

In fact, I have the impression that we tlhIngan Hol lo'taHbogh
tera'ngan vastly overuse the plural in nouns.  Remember section
3.3.2:

     ...  Unlike English, however, the lack of a specific
     suffix for plural does not always indicate that the noun
     is singular.  In Klingon, a noun without a plural suffix
     may still refer to more than one entity.  The plurality
     is indicated by a pronoun, whether a verb prefix (see
     section 4.1) or a full word (section 5.1), or by
     context. ...
     ...
          Under certain circumstances, the only way to know
     whether the noun refers to one or more than one entity
     is by context. ...

Here is another one of those areas where we tend to let our
native language (generally English) over-influence our tlhIngan
Hol.

-- marqem

                         Mark A. Mandel
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
  320 Nevada St. :  Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]

P.S.: This document was dictated with DragonDictate v2.0, except
the Klingon words.  Net typing speed was 14 words per minute. 89%
of the words were recognized correctly.  5% were on the list of
alternate possibilities and were selectable with a single
command, 6% required me to spell at least one letter, and 1 was
new to DragonDictate.



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