tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 23 21:07:08 1994
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pegh in PK
- From: [email protected] (Mark E. Shoulson)
- Subject: pegh in PK
- Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 10:05:36 -0500
- In-Reply-To: Captain Krankor's message of Thu, 24 Feb 94 03:57:26 -0700 <[email protected]>
>From: Captain Krankor <[email protected]>
>Date: Thu, 24 Feb 94 03:57:26 -0700
>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"
Arg. I'd much rather believe that pegh was polysemous, that it just
happened to have more than one meaning, than that it changed chameleonlike
depending on where it was placed. Now I'll grant that position may be used
stylistically to give the reader a hint as to which of the meanings is
meant, but at this point I'm going to believe that "pegh" has *two* verbal
meanings (not unheard-of in Klingon, even when the meanings are not so
closely related), and that "peghbogh De'" could mean *either* "secret data"
or "data that keeps secrets", though pragmatics would make the latter more
likely, while "De' pegh" means more likely "secret data" (and possibly has
no chance at the other meaning, if the other meaning is an "active" verb
and "active" verbs cannot be used adjectivally). Compare "chu'", which
means "to engage" and "to be new". "chu'bogh luch" could mean "new
equipment" or "triggering equipment", but is more likely to mean the
latter, while "luch chu'" is more likely (or required) to mean the former,
for idiomatic reasons. Work for you?
This boils down to *effectively* saying the same things you are, in actual
usage, but with more flexibility for unusual settings (poetry, etc), and
for different reasons.
>In any case, Kudos to mark for picking up on it.
Hey hey... Qongbogh ghew DaQoylaHDI', batlh DaSuqbej. :)
> --Krankor
~mark