tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 18 06:08:08 1994

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<Hol wIja'chuq> was: Re: KLBC: Hoghvam

> 
> 
> Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Will Martin jay'?
> 
> Quoting HoD QanQor from the end of March (I'm clearing up my Mail backlog)
> 
> => Second, "Hol maja'chuq" is certainly correct Klingon for "We discuss
> => [a,the] language".  While it may *look* like the wrong prefix, it is
> => not.  Hol is NOT the object here, it is one of those other nouns
> => "indicating something other than subject or object", which go
> => "first, before the object noun", as per 6.1, page 60.  While such
> => nouns usually take a type 5 noun suffix, they are not required to.
> => This sentence fits that case.  There simply is no object per se,
> => having been precluded by the -chuq suffix.
> 
> Will couldn't accept this analysis, and neither can I. The only time where
> a type 5 suffix is known to be not used is -Daq with pa', naDev, and Dat,
> and (implicitly) temporal nouns, which don't have a type 5 suffix to take
> anyway. Furthermore, the only suffixes that could possibly assign a case role 
> to Hol here are -mo' (which is iffy, and whyever elide the -mo'?) and -'e'.


*sighs*  You are ignoring the key word in Qanqor's post:

	*usually*

Althought the words that precede the rest of the sentence *usually* take 
a type 5, it says right there in the KD that they do not HAVE to.  True, 
this may only be included because of the special cases of naDev, pa', 
etc... but my 'instincts' say this isn't so.  Yeah, I know 'instincts' 
don't count for squat, but I think this would be soemthing worth 
researching/looking into.


> Qanqor is opening up an *interesting* can of worms here. He's sort of
> implying that Hol'e', pabDaj wIqel (as for the language, we're discussing
> its grammar) is legal. (If Hol here is not an object, and coud take a type 5
> suffix, and the suffix is -'e', this follows.) It's probably what Okrand 
> *intended*, because that's how real languages' topicalisers actually get 
> used (see the Japanese *wa*, for example) --- but it's not what Okrand has 
> actually done; he's only used it as an emphatic after grammatical subjects 
> and objects.


Actually, from what I understand, he is not implying that; that is 
already allowed.  There is no disputing that type 5 nouns can come at the 
beginning of a sentence; What differencedoes it make what the type 5 
suffix is?


[deletions for brevity] 
> Though I don't find Hol wIja'chuq *that* ugly, the recasting is excellent.
> As you'll have noticed, I myself would just say [maja'chuqtaHvIS] Hol wIqel.


<Hol wIja'chuq> is definitely ugly.  It is flat-out ungrammatical.  Yes, 
I *know* <ja'chuq> is a seperate dictionary entry, but that doesn't 
change the fact that what we have here is a verb with a type 1 
attached... and the grammar, as we know it, doesn't allow wI- at the 
beginning of such verbs.  Make sense?



--HoD trI'Qal
  tlhwD lIy So'

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