tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 05 16:11:47 1994
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KLBC: Blood of the vanquished
On Tue, 6 Sep 1994, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
[Lotsa stuff deleted]
> (Of course, Okrand makes it obvious he doesn't *use* the language as much as
> we do, by using a monstrosity like jagh Dajeghpu'bogh HuH for "The bile of
> the enemy you defeated" --- where jagh Dajeghpu'bogh and HuH are a N-N
> compound. In Klingon, of course, this is ambiguous with "the bile that
> defeated the enemy/the enemy that defeated the bile". And when I did my
> statistics on relative clause usage earlier this year, I found only a
> couple of instances where Klingonists used a structure like this. Through
> usage, Klingonists know what is ambiguous and hard to understand, and avoid
[...]
I have been meaning to ask this for awhile, and since Mr. Nicholas brought
it up, I though this might be a good time to ask...
I've been listening to the PK tape; and when I transcribed "May the bile
of the vanquished fill your hands", I came up with:
jagh lucharghlu'ta'bogh HuH ghopDu'lIj lungaSjaj!
I just want to know; is that an accurate transcription of what is said in
the tape? (I realize Mr. Nicholas' example above may not be a verbatim quote.)
My second question is that I do not understand Mr. Nicholas' statement
about the ambiguity of the phrase. (Please understand, I'm not trying to
flame Mr. Nicholas, I just want to understand the grammar. {{:-) )
IMHO, his example above is not ambiguous because the verb prefix clearly
indicates that neither {HoH} nor {jagh} is the subject of the verb.
(Unless, the speaker is addressing "Bile" in the second person. {{:-) )
If I wanted to say, "the bile that defeated the enemy", would I use:
{jagh jeyta'bogh HuH}; and
If I wanted to say, "the enemy which defeated the bile", would I use:
{HuH jeyta'bogh jagh}?
Is there something ambiguous about the relative clause, {jagh
lucharghlu'ta'bogh HuH}? IMHO, it appears right-on-target with my
understanding of N1-N2 constructions and relative clauses.
I also didn't understand Mr. Nicholas's statements about topic
constructions. In what context would {verengan'e' pu' vIngev} replace
{verenganvaD pu' vIngev}?
yoDtargh