tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 23 16:56:01 1994

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Re: pegh in PK

markvo':

>In the dialogue at the end, someone says "De' pegh vIghaj", which is
>translated as "I have secret information".  Now, "pegh" as a verb is
>translated in the dictionary as "keep something secret" (i.e. I might say
>"De'vam vIpeghqang" for "I am willing to keep this information secret").
>This sentence clearly uses it adjectivally, meaning "be secret".  It could
>be a noun-noun construction, but somehow "I have the secret of information"
>doesn't seem right; Okrand wouldn't have said that.

Well, well.  That is a *fascinating* datum which had escaped my
notice.  I had been operating under the false notion that pegh as a
verb meant "to be secret".  This is really gonna throw the
which-verbs-can-be-adjectives argument wide open.  But it is really
hard to interpret, because it fits in so badly with everything else
we know.  Here-to-fore, one thing which seemed pretty clear was
that, for any verb which could be used adjectivally, you could still
get the same thing by using -bogh, if you felt like it.  Thus:

taj tuj         "the hot knife"
tujbogh taj     "the knife that is hot", "the hot knife"

This pegh thing breaks that:

De' pegh        "secret data"
peghbogh De'    "data that keeps [it] secret"

Not the same thing at all.  Let's use an example where the -bogh
translation makes more sense.  How about that old Klingon proverb
that I just made up:

peghbogh verengan qub law' QeHbogh vulqangan qub puS

"A Ferengi that keeps secrets (that keeps [something] secret)
     is more rare than an angry Vulcan."

Note how different if we were to change the -bogh's to adjectivals:

verengan pegh qub law' vulqangan QeH qub puS

"A secret Ferengi (one whose existance or identity is unknown)
    is more rare than an angry Vulcan."


So, in short, I'm not really sure just *what* we can conclude from
pegh, other than that it *may* just be an unusual exception.  Or
that it really can have the verbal meaning of "to be secret" even
though that is not given us.  I don't know, I'm taking no stand at
this time.

In any case, Kudos to mark for picking up on it.

                --Krankor

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